exocast

Feb 02 2025 100 ep. 48 mins 663

exocast Podcast artwork

The podcast taking you far beyond the solar system to explore exotic exoplanets around distant stars. Featuring exoplanet astronomers Hugh Osborn, Andrew Rushby and Hannah Wakeford.

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Exocast-78 b: Finding the most distant exoplanets with Dr Eamonn Kerins

Feb 02 2025 44 mins

This month the gang sit in with Dr Eamonn Kerins, expert in gravitational microlensing from the University of Manchester. He tells us how astronomers can find extremely distant exoplanets through the warping effect their mass has on light itself; and takes us through the past, present and future of one of the more obscure exoplanet detection methods. This includes how ESA’s Eucli

Exocast-77b: Exoplanet Instrumentation with Dr Ben Pope

Jan 16 2025 40 mins

For this episode the Exocast team are joined by Dr Benjamin (Ben) Pope from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Ben has worked on everything from transit light curve modelling, to direct imaging instrumentation, to using tree rings to study solar activity and we try desperately to cover it all in the episode. Ben shares with us what excites him the most about the search for exo

Exocast-76b: Exoplanet Interiors with Professor Caroline Dorn

Nov 08 2024 41 mins

The Exocast team are joined on this episode by exoplanetary interior investigator Professor Caroline Dorn. Caroline started her career in Earth sciences and geophysics, studying for her PhD aquifer systems at the University of Lausanne, before switching her focus to the interiors of more distant worlds in 2013 with postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Bern and Zurich. As o

Exocast-75b: Radial Velocity Surveys of Young Planets with Dr. Louise Nielsen

Oct 21 2024 40 mins

The Exocast team are joined on this episode by Dr. Louise Nielsen, a Danish astronomer who, after a batchelor’s degree at Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, moved to the Geneva Observatory for a PhD focussing on radial velocity (RV) observations of exoplanets. Louise then completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oxford and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) i

Exocast-74b: Exoplanet Characterisation and HST/JWST Mission Support with Dr. Néstor Espinoza

Sep 05 2024 46 mins

The Exocast team are joined on this show by Dr. Néstor Espinoza from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA. Néstor is an Assistant Astronomer and Mission Scientist for Hubble and JWST at STScI, where he focusses on transiting exoplanets and their stars. He also provides support for HST and JWST as Mission Scientist for Exoplanet Science in the Instrument

Exocast-73b: Using Adaptive Optics to Find Exoplanets with Jules Fowler

Aug 05 2024 41 mins

The Exocast team are joined on this show by Jules Fowler, a NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where they work to improve extreme adaptive optics technologies and seek the signatures of exoplanets in polarized light. Jules also shares insights gleaned from four years working as an analyst and science software engineer at the Space Telescope Sc

Exocast-72b: Directly Imaging Exoplanetary Motion with Dr Jason Wang

Jul 08 2024 40 mins

The Exocast team return from a short hiatus to be joined on this show by Dr Jason Wang from Northwestern University in Illinois. Jason is a direct imager, and gives us a quick overview of how we are able to find and characterise planets through direct imaging, as well as discussing the Gemini Planet Imager, 51 Eridani b, KPIC, VLT’s Gravity, and the making of the well-known, jaw-

Exocast-71c: Exoplanet News & the 100th episode

Dec 06 2023 32 mins

In this most excellent 100th episode of Exocast from the team we bring you the latest in exoplanet research and news. Hannah and Andrew cover news from the TRAPPIST system. Hannah will dive into the JWST results that have come out about this very famous system of seven Earth-sized rocky planets. Two papers look to the mid-infrared to measure the light directly from the planets b an

Exocast-71b: Do All Planets Orbit Stars?

Nov 13 2023 36 mins

In this episode, Hannah, Hugh, and Andrew ask the question: Do all planets orbit stars? Even though the vast majority of planets found so far are bound to a star, there have been detections of planetary-mass objects floating alone through space. Are these planets? How do these objects form, and how can we detect them? Is it possible that these free-floating objects could be conside

Exocast-70c: Exoplanet news

Oct 15 2023 41 mins

Hugh, Hannah, & Andrew discuss a handful of interesting recent exoplanet papers from the past few months. We chat about the news coverage of K2-18b and the claims of biomarkers in that atmosphere, new discoveries, exciting atmospheres, and haze formation. Hannah dives into the controversy of K2-18b and the announcement of DMS (a biomarker on Earth) detection amongst a methane domin