Hi, I’m José

I am an astronomer and astrophotographer based in Switzerland. Whether I’m under the stars with a camera or analysing starlight in search of distant worlds, the sky is where I feel at home.

I am currently in my final year of PhD at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) in Porto, where I search for Earth-sized exoplanets and study their composition.

When a planet passes in front of its star, it blocks a tiny fraction of the light and causes a dip in observed brightness. This is called a transit, and allows us to measure its size. The star also wobbles slightly under the planet’s gravitational pull, revealing its mass. Together, size and mass give us density, and density tells us what a planet is made of. The catch: stars are active, and that activity can drown out the faint signals we are looking for. Disentangling the two is the core of my research.

My images have been selected 4 times for NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, and published in magazines including National Geographic, Astronomy, Ciel et Espace, Astrosurf Magazine, and others.

I love sharing this passion, through public talks, astrophotography workshops, private observations, and anything that gets people to look up. The night sky belongs to everyone, and I believe it shouldn’t feel complicated. Part of that means advocating for darker skies, because light pollution is quietly erasing one of humanity’s oldest connections to the universe, and threatening our ecosystems.