Hi ! My name is José Rodrigues and I search for exoplanets

I am currently in my final year of PhD at Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) in Porto. 

When a planet passes in front of a star, it hides part of the stellar surface, causing a dip in brightness. This is called a transit. The bigger the planet, the deeper the dip. By monitoring the brightness of stars, we can measure the radius (the size) of exoplanets.

When we say that a planet orbits around a star, it is not exactly true. Actually, both objects orbit around their common center of mass. This causes the star to “wobble”, coming towards us, and away, shifting the starlight towards the blue, and the red, respectively. Using spectrographs, we can detect this motion and determine the mass of the planets. This is called the radial velocities method.

Combining both transits and radial velocities, we are able to determine the density of exoplanets and understand what they are made of.

However, stars are active ! This activity drowns out the signal coming from the exoplanets. We need to mitigate stellar activity to detect (and characterize) Earth-size exoplanets. This is what my PhD project is about. 

Contact

Email: jose.rodrigues [@] astro.up.pt