Transiting Extrasolar Planets
Transiting extrasolar planets orbiting moderatelly bright stars offer the unique oportunity of determining the masses and radii of these objects. These physiscal properties can be used to determine the bulk composition and physical structure of the planets. Moreover, these systems can be targets
of detailed follow-up observations to further constrain their orbital and physical properties. In this context I'm a collaborator of the HATSouth survey, whose principal goal is to discover new transiting extrasolar planets in regions of the parameter space where the number of detected systems is still low. I'm also part of the exoCL team, which is a Chilean based
collaboration with the goal of discovering and characterizing extrasolar planets.
I'm very interested in understand how planets as massive as Jupiter can be found at orbital separations smaller than 1 AU. While hundreds of hot Jupiters have been found, the strong planet-star interactions from which they are victim of can blur out the information about their formation and/or migration mechanisms. Transiting warm Jupiters, do not suffer from strong interactions but are hard to detect. More discoveries like HATS-17b are required for discriminating between different formation and migration mechanisms.
CHAT stands for the Chilean Hungarian Automated Telescope and is a Chilean funded 0.7m telescope that is being comissioned at Las Campanas Observatory. CHAT was designed for performing ultra-precise photometry and will be mostly used for the follow-up of HATSouth candidates. I'm currently working on the installation and comissioning of the telescope.
