Exoplanets orbit distant stars many lightyears away. The name comes from extrasolarplanets, which are planets orbiting outside of oursolar system. To date, astronomers have found over5,600 exoplanets. The method resulting in the mostdiscoveries is the Transit Method. This methodinvolves an exoplanet transiting in front of the star,and the orbital plane being fortunate enough to belined up to be observed from our vantage point.TESS, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite,is expected to be the workhorse in discovering newexoplanets. The advantage with the transit methodis that astronomers are able to study the planet’satmosphere by studying the light from the starpassing through the transiting planet’s atmosphere.To assist in examining transits, the James Web SpaceTelescope is able to use its infrared cameras toexamine the light from the transit to help determinea planet’s atmosphere and makeup.Over the past few years, JWST has peered into exoplanet atmospheres in unprecedenteddetail. It has shown us what these distant worldsare made of, what exotic reactions are active, howthey look like in the infrared, and what clouds theyhost. Our presenter will show some of the moreintriguing results, before addressing thequestion of finding life: where should we look, andhow would we know when we find it? JWST hasalready observed potentially habitable planets, butthe results are not the easiest to interpret. Come tothe talk to find out why!Our Speaker for the general meetingpresentation is Michael Zhang, a postdoctoralfellow at the University of Chicago. He grew up inToronto and worked at Microsoft as a softwareengineer before obtaining an astronomy PhD atCaltech. His research focuses on observingexoplanet atmospheres with big telescopes,especially the space telescope JWST and the 10meter Keck telescopes in Hawaii. He is especiallyinterested in whether small, rocky planets can holdon to atmospheres. In his spare time, he likes fishingand flying remote controlled planes.
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