Friday, April 26, 2024 at 12:15 pm

JILA Foothills Room

Rachel Bowens-Rubin, UC-Santa Cruz

"What would it take to characterize a cold ice-giant exoplanet?"

Abstract:

The direct imaging technique has the power to characterize the atmosphere and formation history of wide-orbit and non-transiting exoplanets beyond the snowline. Microlensing surveys have hinted that cold ice giants exoplanets could be incredibly common, but we have yet to characterize a single one. In this talk, I'll overview our abilities to use direct imaging from the ground and space to find and characterize this emerging population of cold sub-Jupiter mass exoplanets. I will share the results of our direct imaging/radial velocity survey to try to find a Neptune-like exoplanet candidate orbiting our fifth closest neighbor, Wolf 359. To conclude, I will overview my upcoming JWST Cycle 3 program, "GO 6122: Cool Kids on the Block" which will have the potential to directly image the first ice- giant exoplanet in the stellar neighborhood.

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