Science Briefing: New Insights into Rocky Exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope
Location
Virtual
Contact Information
About Event
In this final edition of NASA’s Universe of Learning Science Briefings, we will explore how the James Webb Space Telescope is revolutionizing our understanding of rocky planets around stars other than the sun.
Natalie Allen will discuss the current state of JWST observations of the TRAPPIST-1 system, which consists of seven Earth-sized rocky planets orbiting an ultracool red dwarf star. She will also discuss her own program characterizing the habitable-zone planet TRAPPIST-1 e using a novel observing strategy.
Jegug Ih will talk about the principles behind modeling the atmospheres and surfaces of small exoplanets that enable us to interpret their observations with JWST.
Hannah Diamond-Lowe will introduce the Rocky Worlds Director’s Discretionary Time program, a major collaboration between NASA’s Webb and Hubble space telescopes. She will explain its main goals and provide the most up-to-date information on program progress.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
The NASA’s Universe of Learning Science Briefings are professional learning telecons for the informal science education community, done in partnership with the NASA’s Museum & Informal Education Alliance, now found on NASA CONNECTS. These monthly thematic briefings highlight current NASA astrophysics explorations and discoveries from across the suite of NASA astrophysics missions. NASA scientists and engineers provide contemporary science results, and are able to respond to listener questions during the telecon. NASA-developed education and outreach resources, matched to the monthly theme, are included in every briefing.
In order to participate in the telecon and ask questions of the scientists, please join NASA’s Museum & Informal Education Alliance.
Facilitator & Presenters
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Dr. Kelly Lepo is an Education and Outreach Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she supports outreach efforts for the James Webb Space Telescope. She received a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Toronto. During her time in Canada, she made numerous local and national media appearances to talk about everything from the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse to the Super Blue Blood Moon. She previously served as the Coordinator of the McGill Space Institute, taught physics at Gonzaga University, and helped build the Large Hadron Collider at CERN -
Natalie Allen is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University who researches exoplanet atmospheres using transmission spectroscopy with space-based telescopes. In particular, she is focused on whether rocky planets orbiting M dwarfs, which we believe constitute most of the rocky planets in the universe, are able to maintain atmospheres or not. -
Dr. Jegug Ih is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Space Telescope Science Institute who works on using forward and inverse models of atmospheres and surfaces of small exoplanets to interpret their JWST and Hubble observations. -
Dr. Hannah Diamond-Lowe is an Assistant Astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute, where she studies small planets orbiting nearby M dwarfs. Hannah received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Chicago in Geophysical Sciences, before moving to Harvard University to pursue a PhD in Astronomy. After receiving her PhD in 2020, she moved to Copenhagen, Denmark to do her postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Denmark. Hannah is the PI of the Hot Rocks Survey, a large JWST program to test nine hot rocky planets for the presence of atmospheres, and the companion Hot Rock Stars medium program on HST to gather UV spectra of their host stars. She is the Deputy Lead of the Rocky Worlds Director’s Discretionary Time program.
Event Resources
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Slide Presentation PPT
27 MB -
Resources Document
338 KB