Dr. Suvrath Mahadevan

Professor

Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
College:  Eberly College of Science
Address: 418 Davey Lab
Phone: 814-865-0261
E-mail: suvrath@astro.psu.edu
Website: hpf.psu.edu

 

A Sweet Treat: Preparing to Study the Atmosphere of a “Cotton Candy” Planet with JWST
“Super-puff” planets are an unusual population of extremely low density exoplanets. With radii similar to Jupiter, yet possessing 1/100th of Jupiter’s mass, these planets have densities akin to the density of cotton candy. How these planets form and how they manage to maintain their large extended atmospheres remains a mystery. Their atmospheres should hold important clues into their puffy natures. Unfortunately, it appears that super-puffs also possess high altitude hazes (think Titan) that block us from studying their atmospheres when observing with the Hubble Space Telescope. The upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will enable us to see through the haze layers to the atmospheres beneath by observing at longer wavelengths where the haze should (hopefully) become transparent. We were awarded time to observe one such super-puff, known as Kepler-51d, with JWST. These observations, which are scheduled for Fall 2022 (though contingent on a timely and successful JWST launch), will be one of the first in-depth looks into the atmosphere of one of these unusual planets. In this project, the student will work with Dr. Jessica Libby-Roberts and Dr. Suvrath Mahadevan to prepare for these observations by helping to develop the tools necessary to reduce, analyze, and interpret the atmospheric spectrum. They will test different methods for removing noise and extracting results on simulated JWST data and real JWST data post-launch of the spacecraft. For the successful completion of this project, the student will need to have some familiarity with programming in python, or is planning to take (or has taken) ASTRO 21 (or equivalent) to get familiar with it.