This week I was in Edinburgh for the UK Exoplanet Conference 2022 (UKExom22 for short), where I presented details of the project and the work of the Planet Hunters NGTS so far, as well as details of four new planet candidates. It was an opportunity for me to showcase the incredible work of Planet Hunters NGTS volunteers to an audience of over 100 UK-based exoplanet astronomers, and also an opportunity to meet (in some cases for the first time!) members of the NGTS team who have been working hard to vet the best candidates from the project and coordinate follow-up observations.
The first day of talks included exciting results from the new JWST mission and the techniques being used to detect Earth-like objects that are currently difficult to find due to stellar activity. Later in the afternoon, I gave a 12-minute presentation explaining why citizen science is great, how Planet Hunters NGTS works, and what we know so far about new planet candidates. The audience was very interested in the project, impressed by the enthusiasm of the Planet Hunters NGTS volunteers and the fact that a very preliminary analysis has already found four new planet candidates.
The second day of the conference started with more interesting talks, including the current status of the PLATO mission and the results of the ASTEP telescope, which is helping to search for exoplanets at an observatory in Antarctica. Thanks to a relaxed schedule in the afternoon, I was able to meet with Sam Gill, another member of the Planet Hunters NGTS team, who is able to fit the NGTS data to a better model than the first search and provide a more accurate estimate of the planet’s radius. Below is an image of the results of Sam’s work, showing more plots of each pass and the phase-wrapped light curves fitted to a more accurate model. I also had the opportunity to speak with Matt Burleigh and Alicia Kendall, collaborators on the NGTS. They have obtained more photometry on some of the candidates discussed in the last blog post, and by combining data from multiple data sources, they are able to provide a more accurate radius estimate for target 69654531.
The conference wasn’t all about science, with many taking a short trip up to Blackford Hill on Tuesday evening, where the Royal Observatory is located and offers fantastic views of Edinburgh Castle, Arthur’s Seat and the Sun over Leith. The second day of the conference concluded with a conference dinner and a trip to a karaoke bar, where a number of astronomers tried to sing Bohemian Rhapsody.
The final day of the conference featured talks on improved techniques for measuring stellar radial velocities that will allow for more accurate measurements of exoplanets, and the first direct detection of planetary material accreting in a white dwarf star. The discovery was made by detecting five (yes, just five!) X-ray photons emitted by a white dwarf, which were determined to be the remains of a planet that had fallen into the white dwarf’s atmosphere.
This marks the end of the first UK Exoplanet Conference I have attended in person, and I am now looking forward to the one hosted by UCL in London next year. In the meantime, I will be scrutinizing more candidates from the project and coordinating follow-up observations, as well as considering applications for additional observing time that may help us come closer to validating or confirming some of the candidates already mentioned, as well as others that will be discovered in the coming months. Keep an eye on our blog for updates!
