I am a retired member and 2023-2024 Admininstrative Committee co-Chair of the Astrobites collaboration. Astrobites is a graduate student run organisation which aims to improve the accessibility of research by producing daily astrophysics paper summaries written at an undergraduate level. Check out my work at Astrobites here.

NASA ExoExplorers Series: Atmospheres Across the Radius Valley

The last decade of exoplanet exploration has revealed a population small short-period planets, with peaks in the population at sub-Neptune and super-Earth radii, and a “radius valley” in between. Based on bulk composition alone, the nature of these planets has remained elusive, but atmospheric observations offer a new window to explore their compositional diversity. In this talk, I present results from the first multi-planet system observed by the COMPASS program which aims to build a critical link between atmospheric characterisation and planetary demographics to explore the nature of such planets. 

Light from Distant Worlds:
​Exoplanet Atmospheres Revealed by JWST

University of Bristol astrophysics researchers, Hannah Wakeford and Lili Alderson, have been working with the international Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program to analyse data from the largest telescope in space: JWST. Studying the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-39 b, they have helped create a molecular and chemical profile of the distant world’s skies. Read the full story here.

The Strangest Skies in the Galaxy

From the Solar System to the most extreme exoplanets, I explain how astronomers study the atmospheres of planets, and highlight some of the strangest skies we've explored so far.
HEADER IMAGE CREDIT:  NASA, ESA, G. BACON