Detecting Transiting Exoplanets in Stellar Clusters - Jonathan Rizzo

Name: Jonathan Rizzo
Additional Students: none
Mentor: Stacy Palen
College: Science
Department: Physics
Title: "Detecting Transiting Exoplanets in Stellar Clusters "
Abstract: Detecting planets outside our own solar system is difficult. They can't be directly imaged, so one must employ a suite of techniques to find them. Despite the difficulty of the task, it is indeed possible to detect exoplanets with the use of a small telescope. Among the thousands of exoplanets discovered, there are but a handful which have been found in stellar clusters. In this project we took telescope data of a star cluster called Messier 41 to begin to answer the question; how does the number density of planets inside stellar clusters compare to planets around lone stars? Over the course of this project we have used robotic telescopes, developed software to automatically extract data, and came up with ways to handle large data-sets, all to help us attempt to detect new exoplanets. In this ongoing project we are in the process of analyzing over 5 GB of telescope data in order to try and find a single exoplanet. Despite no success yet, we are excited to keep pushing the science forward learning all we can along the way.

Видео Detecting Transiting Exoplanets in Stellar Clusters - Jonathan Rizzo канала OUR Symposium 2020