Paul Anthony Wilson | PaulAnthonyWilson.com
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Paul Anthony Wilson

I am a Norwegian / British astronomer who working on the scientific preparation of the PLATO exoplanet mission. The PLATO space mission is designed to search for small, rocky exoplanets in the habitable zones of stars like the Sun.

I also work on a variety of astrophysical topics mainly focused on far-UV observations aimed at understanding the the formation environments of young planets. I am also very interested in work related to exoplanet atmospheres, radial velocity followup and exocomets.
rpm

27

Jul 2020

How to verify the Zoom rpm file before installing

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Zoom’s rpm packages are signed with a GPG key. To verify that the rpm file has not been interfered with you …

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Tech
1 Min Read
EMEZhnLWoAADrVz

18

Dec 2019

CHEOPS and PLATO at a glance

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

PLATO and CHEOPS are two European Space Agency missions aimed at characterising exoplanets. CHEOPS is an S-class mission (small mission in …

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Astronomy, PLATO
3 Min Read
Bpic_system_hires_2048px_shifted

19

Aug 2019

Evidence for an additional planet in the β Pictoris system

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Beta Pictoris is one of the most ideal targets for studying planet formation. The young 23 Myr system consists of a …

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Astronomy, Exoplanets, Research
5 Min Read
clint-adair-BW0vK-FA3eg-unsplash

05

Aug 2019

An open, borderless, decentralised, trusteless space object catalogue. Possible or wishful thinking?

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

A real problem in the space situational awareness community, is the lack of a shared validated catalogue of known space debris. This …

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Cryptocurrency, General
3 Min Read
PLATO-Satellite-in-space_artist_s-impression_(c)_OHB-System-AG

17

Apr 2019

PLATO High Resolution Images

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

High resolution up-to-date images of the PLATO exoplanet mission are hard to find. I’ll collect high resolution PLATO images here as …

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Astronomy, Exoplanets, PLATO
1 Min Read
eberhard-grossgasteiger-338314-unsplash

14

Nov 2018

Detection of Nitrogen gas in the β Pictoris circumstellar disc

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Our new paper is out today on the first detection of nitrogen in the famous planetary system: β Pictoris. The debris …

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Astronomy, Research
2 Min Read
PLATO_Hab

05

Nov 2018

PLATO and the search for planets in the habitable zone

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

One of the key scientific goals of PLATO is to detect terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-type stars …

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Exoplanets, PLATO
5 Min Read
plato_mission

11

Oct 2018

How is the PLATO exoplanet mission different from TESS?

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

The PLATO mission will monitor the brightness variations of more than 200,000 stars to look for planets which transit their host …

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Exoplanets, PLATO
3 Min Read
Credit: T. Pyle (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA.

25

Jan 2017

The Hill sphere transit of the directly imaged exoplanet beta Pictoris b

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

This summer will be the first time that we’ll be able to observe the Hill sphere of a directly imaged exoplanet …

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Astronomy, Research
5 Min Read
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01

Oct 2015

This is the type of image we astronomers discard

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

I came across this image whilst doing some work and it made me halt my work for a bit as I …

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Astronomy
1 Min Read
U2F_security_key

25

Apr 2015

High level security with U2F

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Have your gmail hacked and it’s very likely that you’ll also loose access to your other accounts as well. Your PayPal, Facebook and …

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Tech
4 Min Read
Neil deGrasse Tyson and Paul Anthony Wilson

11

Jul 2014

My meeting with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Today I got the unique opportunity to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson at my new job at the Institut d’Astrophysique in Paris. By …

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General
1 Min Read
The HARPS Spectrograph

12

Oct 2011

The inner sanctuary of exoplanet astronomy: The HARPS room

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

The dwelling of the HARPS intrument One of today’s highlights was seeing the room where the HARPS instrument is being kept. For it be …

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Astronomy
1 Min Read
Clear to cloudy hot Jupiters

14

Apr 2011

How to decide on which exoplanet candidates to observe

Posted by Paul Anthony Wilson

Here I will go through the steps I use when deciding on which exoplanet to observe using an amateur telescope. Step 1: …

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Astronomy, Exoplanets
4 Min Read
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