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Dr Benjamin Pope

ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow

Physics
Faculty of Science
b.pope@uq.edu.au

Overview

I research extrasolar planets - planets around other stars - and focus on developing and applying new data science approaches for detecting and characterizing them. I have taken nearly every approach to exoplanet and stellar observation, including transits, radial velocities, direct imaging, and asteroseismology.

As an ARC DECRA Fellow I'm mainly working on exoplanet direct imaging with the James Webb Space Telescope, and especially how we can use differentiable & probabilistic programming to enhance data analysis to detect faint objects in noisy data. I also work on radio astronomy to study planets' magnetic interactions with their host stars, and using radiocarbon in tree rings as a tracer of long term solar activity.

I grew up in Sydney, New South Wales, and studied for my Honours and Masters at the University of Sydney. I studied abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2017 I completed my DPhil in Astrophysics at Balliol College, Oxford. From 2017-20 was a NASA Sagan Fellow at the NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and Center for Data Science. I'm now a Lecturer in Astrophysics and DECRA Fellow at the University of Queensland.

I'm into open source, open science, and climate action. I was a member of the winning Balliol College team in the 2016-17 series of University Challenge on BBC2, with the wonderful Joey Goldman, Freddy Potts, and Jacob Lloyd. Sometimes I write: see my latest piece in The Monthly, about the possible discovery of phosphine on Venus.

Research Interests

  • Exoplanets
  • Stellar Astrophysics
  • Machine Learning
  • Interferometry
  • Image Processing
  • Radio Astronomy
  • Astrobiology
  • Radiocarbon

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, University of Oxford
  • Masters (Coursework) of Science, University of Sydney
  • Bachelor (Honours) of Science (Advanced), University of Sydney

Publications

  • Journal Article: Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Pueyo, Laurent, Xin, Yinzi and Tuthill, Peter G. (2021). Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation. The Astrophysical Journal, 907 (1) 40, 1-14. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abcb00

  • Journal Article: No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Bedell, Megan, Callingham, Joseph R., Vedantham, Harish K., Snellen, Ignas A. G., Price-Whelan, Adrian M. and Shimwell, Timothy W. (2020). No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 890 (2) L19, L19. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab5b99

  • Journal Article: Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction

    Vedantham, H. K., Callingham, J. R., Shimwell, T. W., Tasse, C., Pope, B. J. S., Bedell, M., Snellen, I., Best, P., Hardcastle, M. J., Haverkorn, M., Mechev, A., O'Sullivan, S. P., Rottgering, H. J. A. and White, G. J. (2020). Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction. Nature Astronomy, 4 (6), 577-583. doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1011-9

  • Journal Article: The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., White, Timothy R., Farr, Will M., Yu, Jie, Greklek-McKeon, Michael, Huber, Daniel, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Bedding, Timothy R., Boyajian, Tabetha, Creevey, Orlagh L. and Hogg, David W. (2019). The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 245 (1) ARTN 8, 8. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab3d29

  • Journal Article: The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Davies, Guy R., Hawkins, Keith, White, Timothy R., Stokholm, Amalie, Bieryla, Allyson, Latham, David W., Lucey, Madeline, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Antoci, Victoria, Bedding, Timothy R., Bowman, Dominic M., Caldwell, Douglas A., Chontos, Ashley, Esquerdo, Gilbert A., Huber, Daniel, Jofre, Paula, Murphy, Simon J., van Reeth, Timothy, Aguirre, Victor Silva and Yu, Jie (2019). The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 244 (1) 18. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab2c04

  • Journal Article: Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Withers, Paul, Callingham, Joseph R. and Vogt, Marissa F. (2019). Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484 (1), 648-658. doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty3512

  • Journal Article: Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor

    Callingham, J. R., Tuthill, P. G., Pope, B. J. S., Williams, P. M., Crowther, P. A., Edwards, M., Norris, B. and Kedziora-Chudczer, L. (2018). Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor. Nature Astronomy, 3 (1), 82-87. doi: 10.1038/s41550-018-0617-7

  • Journal Article: Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades

    White, T. R., Pope, B. J. S., Antoci, V., Papics, P. I., Aerts, C., Gies, D. R., Gordon, K., Huber, D., Schaefer, G. H., Aigrain, S., Albrecht, S., Barclay, T., Barentsen, G., Beck, P. G., Bedding, T. R., Andersen, M. Fredslund, Grundahl, F., Howell, S. B., Ireland, M. J., Murphy, S. J., Nielsen, M. B., Aguirre, V. Silva and Tuthill, P. G. (2017). Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 471 (3), 2882-2901. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stx1050

  • Journal Article: Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Parviainen, Hannu and Aigrain, Suzanne (2016). Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 461 (4), 3399-3409. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw1373

  • Journal Article: Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data

    Pope, B. J. S., White, T. R., Huber, D., Murphy, S. J., Bedding, T. R., Caldwell, D. A., Sarai, A., Aigrain, S. and Barclay, T. (2016). Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 455 (1), L36-L40. doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv143

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Grants

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Supervision

  • Observing Naked-Eye Stars and their Planets with TESS

    Doctor Philosophy

  • Naked-Eye Stars and Their Planets with TESS

    Doctor Philosophy

  • Weighing supermassive black holes with the Dark Energy Survey

    Doctor Philosophy

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Available Projects

  • Studying Stellar Flares and Cosmic Explosions - using Tree Rings!

    Honours Projects Available

    Radiocarbon dating is used by archaeologists to determine the ages of wooden artefacts and remains of living things, by measuring how much carbon-13 has decayed to carbon-12 since the material last took in fresh carbon from the air. The amount of carbon-13 in the atmosphere has slowly varied over time due to solar activity and volcanic eruptions, so to calibrate their radiocarbon dates, archaeologists use precise measurements of tree rings of known age. With alternating patterns of slow and fast growth, tree rings form a barcode pattern that can be matched to libraries stretching back millennia, giving us precise radiocarbon references for almost any year since the last Ice Age.

    In 2012, a remarkable discovery was made by Fusa Miyake: in 774 AD, there was a huge spike in radiocarbon all over the world, that decayed over the course of a year or two, and may have been associated with powerful aurorae noted by mediaeval monks. It was almost certainly astrophysical in origin. Now several 'Miyake events' have been discovered, and astronomers wonder: was this a powerful solar flare? A supernova? Or the result of a 'magnetar burst', the powerful blast of a magnetised neutron star rearranging itself.

    New radiocarbon data in the IntCal20 record are ripe for analysis, by statistically digging into the vast new dataset to find new Miyake events hiding in the noise. We can then determine the true rate of their occurrence, their amplitude and timing, and help narrow down the astrophysical origin of this event. This is an ideal Honours project for a student with strong Python skills and an interest in statistics and interdisciplinary studies.

  • SETI - Fermi Paradox and Interstellar Colonization

    There are pretty open-ended projects, only at Honours level, available in modelling interstellar and intergalactic travel and colonization for understanding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the Fermi Paradox. For example - how easy is intergalactic travel, really, in an expanding universe? Full relativistic calculations of this would shed light on whether recent studies, suggesting 'grabby aliens' could rapidly conquer the whole universe, are realistic. As another example - what would our ability be to resist colonization of our own solar system by an external civilization? There is an asymmetry here - where it takes enormous energy to achieve interstellar travel, planetary defence against natural asteroids and comets in our own solar system is already within our captabilities. How easily would this be adapted to face hostile efforts - and what consequences would this have politically, legally, and for the Fermi Paradox?

  • The Dawn of Exoplanet Radio Astronomy

    Apply for PhD Positions through RTP

    Honours Projects Available

    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered with optical astronomy, whether by using the Doppler effect to see the planet pulling its star back and forth (the radial velocity method, which won Didier Queloz & Michel Mayor the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics), or looking for the dip in brightness as a planet passes in front of a star (the transit method). In our Solar System, the Sun, Earth, and the gas giants are bright sources of radio waves, which tell us a great deal about their magnetic fields and interactions, and for decades astronomers have searched for these effects in more distant planetary systems. Only a couple of the closest stars have been detected in radio waves - otherwise most radio sources are exotic stellar remnants, or black holes at the centres of galaxies. A handful of planets have been discovered by radio astronomy around neutron stars, but the search for radio emission from exoplanets around ordinary stars has until recently not yielded results.

    A controversial new discovery by the LOFAR radio telescope in Europe may have opened the window to an important new way to discover and understand exoplanets. LOFAR has found the nearby old, quiet red dwarf GJ 1151 was found to emit circularly polarized radio waves, which we have interpreted as evidence of star-planet magnetic interaction. RV instruments have searched for such a short-period planet, with inconclusive and controversial results. There are other systems we don't believe to be from planetary interactions, but might be new and interesting stellar astrophysics. With many more detections on the way from LOFAR, this could be the beginning of exoplanet radio astronomy. LOFAR is a pathfinder for the recently-approved Square Kilometre Array to be built in Australia, which will be nearly an order of magnitude more sensitive, with the potential to discover hundreds or thousands of these systems.

    I have been involved in this project from the beginning, particularly in optical follow-up to search for these planets and understand these stars with ground-based telescopes and satellite data. I have also published theoretical work on what to expect from exoplanet radio observations. There are Honours and PhD projects available in:

    • Helping radial-velocity and TESS photometry follow-up of radio-detected stars
    • Theoretical predictions of discoveries with the SKA

    These would be great projects for students wanting to do a lot of classical observational astronomy, or who want to get to grips with plasma physics.

View all Available Projects

Publications

Featured Publications

  • Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Pueyo, Laurent, Xin, Yinzi and Tuthill, Peter G. (2021). Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation. The Astrophysical Journal, 907 (1) 40, 1-14. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abcb00

  • No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Bedell, Megan, Callingham, Joseph R., Vedantham, Harish K., Snellen, Ignas A. G., Price-Whelan, Adrian M. and Shimwell, Timothy W. (2020). No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 890 (2) L19, L19. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab5b99

  • Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction

    Vedantham, H. K., Callingham, J. R., Shimwell, T. W., Tasse, C., Pope, B. J. S., Bedell, M., Snellen, I., Best, P., Hardcastle, M. J., Haverkorn, M., Mechev, A., O'Sullivan, S. P., Rottgering, H. J. A. and White, G. J. (2020). Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction. Nature Astronomy, 4 (6), 577-583. doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1011-9

  • The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., White, Timothy R., Farr, Will M., Yu, Jie, Greklek-McKeon, Michael, Huber, Daniel, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Bedding, Timothy R., Boyajian, Tabetha, Creevey, Orlagh L. and Hogg, David W. (2019). The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 245 (1) ARTN 8, 8. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab3d29

  • The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Davies, Guy R., Hawkins, Keith, White, Timothy R., Stokholm, Amalie, Bieryla, Allyson, Latham, David W., Lucey, Madeline, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Antoci, Victoria, Bedding, Timothy R., Bowman, Dominic M., Caldwell, Douglas A., Chontos, Ashley, Esquerdo, Gilbert A., Huber, Daniel, Jofre, Paula, Murphy, Simon J., van Reeth, Timothy, Aguirre, Victor Silva and Yu, Jie (2019). The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 244 (1) 18. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab2c04

  • Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Withers, Paul, Callingham, Joseph R. and Vogt, Marissa F. (2019). Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484 (1), 648-658. doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty3512

  • Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor

    Callingham, J. R., Tuthill, P. G., Pope, B. J. S., Williams, P. M., Crowther, P. A., Edwards, M., Norris, B. and Kedziora-Chudczer, L. (2018). Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor. Nature Astronomy, 3 (1), 82-87. doi: 10.1038/s41550-018-0617-7

  • Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades

    White, T. R., Pope, B. J. S., Antoci, V., Papics, P. I., Aerts, C., Gies, D. R., Gordon, K., Huber, D., Schaefer, G. H., Aigrain, S., Albrecht, S., Barclay, T., Barentsen, G., Beck, P. G., Bedding, T. R., Andersen, M. Fredslund, Grundahl, F., Howell, S. B., Ireland, M. J., Murphy, S. J., Nielsen, M. B., Aguirre, V. Silva and Tuthill, P. G. (2017). Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 471 (3), 2882-2901. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stx1050

  • Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Parviainen, Hannu and Aigrain, Suzanne (2016). Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 461 (4), 3399-3409. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw1373

  • Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data

    Pope, B. J. S., White, T. R., Huber, D., Murphy, S. J., Bedding, T. R., Caldwell, D. A., Sarai, A., Aigrain, S. and Barclay, T. (2016). Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 455 (1), L36-L40. doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv143

Journal Article

  • Coronagraphic Data Post-processing Using Projections on Instrumental Modes

    Xin, Yinzi, Pueyo, Laurent, Laugier, Romain, Pogorelyuk, Leonid, Douglas, Ewan S., Pope, Benjamin J. S. and Cahoy, Kerri L. (2024). Coronagraphic Data Post-processing Using Projections on Instrumental Modes. The Astrophysical Journal, 963 (2) 96, 96. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad1879

  • Reconstructing Sunspot Number by Forward-Modelling Open Solar Flux

    Owens, Mathew J., Lockwood, Mike, Barnard, Luke A., Usoskin, Ilya, Hayakawa, Hisashi and Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2024). Reconstructing Sunspot Number by Forward-Modelling Open Solar Flux. Solar Physics, 299 (1) 3. doi: 10.1007/s11207-023-02241-3

  • Phenomenology and periodicity of radio emission from the stellar system AU Microscopii

    Bloot, S., Callingham, J. R., Vedantham, H. K., Kavanagh, R. D., Pope, B. J. S., Climent, J. B., Guirado, J. C., Peña-Moñino, L. and Pérez-Torres, M. (2023). Phenomenology and periodicity of radio emission from the stellar system AU Microscopii. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 682 A170, A170. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202348065

  • Differentiable optics with ∂Lux: I - deep calibration of flat field and phase retrieval with automatic differentiation

    Desdoigts, Louis, Pope, Benjamin J. S., Dennis, Jordan and Tuthill, Peter G. (2023). Differentiable optics with ∂Lux: I - deep calibration of flat field and phase retrieval with automatic differentiation. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, 9 (2) 028007. doi: 10.1117/1.JATIS.9.2.028007

  • JWST/NIRCam discovery of the First Y+Y brown dwarf binary: WISE J033605.05–014350.4

    Calissendorff, Per, De Furio, Matthew, Meyer, Michael, Albert, Loïc, Aganze, Christian, Ali-Dib, Mohamad, Bardalez Gagliuffi, Daniella C., Baron, Frederique, Beichman, Charles A., Burgasser, Adam J., Cushing, Michael C., Faherty, Jacqueline Kelly, Fontanive, Clémence, Gelino, Christopher R., Gizis, John E., Greenbaum, Alexandra Z., Kirkpatrick, J. Davy, Leggett, Sandy K., Martinache, Frantz, Mary, David, N’Diaye, Mamadou, Pope, Benjamin J. S., Roellig, Thomas, Sahlmann, Johannes, Sivaramakrishnan, Anand, Thorngren, Daniel Peter, Ygouf, Marie and Vandal, Thomas (2023). JWST/NIRCam discovery of the First Y+Y brown dwarf binary: WISE J033605.05–014350.4. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 947 (2) L30, 1-6. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/acc86d

  • ticktack: A Python package for carbon box modelling

    Sharma, Utkarsh, Zhang, Qingyuan, Dennis, Jordan and Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2023). ticktack: A Python package for carbon box modelling. Journal of Open Source Software, 8 (83), 5084. doi: 10.21105/joss.05084

  • The near infrared imager and slitless spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope. IV. aperture masking interferometry

    Sivaramakrishnan, Anand, Tuthill, Peter, Lloyd, James P., Greenbaum, Alexandra Z., Thatte, Deepashri, Cooper, Rachel A., Vandal, Thomas, Kammerer, Jens, Sanchez-Bermudez, Joel, Pope, Benjamin J. S., Blakely, Dori, Albert, Loïc, Cook, Neil J., Johnstone, Doug, Martel, André R., Volk, Kevin, Soulain, Anthony, Artigau, Étienne, Lafrenière, David, Willott, Chris J., Parmentier, Sébastien, Ford, K. E. Saavik, McKernan, Barry, Vila, M. Begoña, Rowlands, Neil, Doyon, René, Beaulieu, Mathilde, Desdoigts, Louis, Fullerton, Alexander W. ... Zheng, Sheng-hai (2023). The near infrared imager and slitless spectrograph for the James Webb Space Telescope. IV. aperture masking interferometry. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 135 (1043) 015003. doi: 10.1088/1538-3873/acaebd

  • V-LoTSS: The circularly polarised LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey

    Callingham, J. R., Shimwell, T. W., Vedantham, H. K., Bassa, C. G., O'Sullivan, S. P., Yiu, T. W. H., Bloot, S., Hardcastle, M. J., Haverkorn, M., Kavanagh, R. D., Lamy, L., Pope, B. J. S., Rottgering, H. J. A., Schwarz, D. J., Tasse, C., van Weeren, R. J. and et al. (2022). V-LoTSS: The circularly polarised LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 670 A124, A124. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202245567

  • Modelling cosmic radiation events in the tree-ring radiocarbon record

    Zhang, Qingyuan, Sharma, Utkarsh, Dennis, Jordan A., Scifo, Andrea, Kuitems, Margot, Büntgen, Ulf, Owens, Mathew J., Dee, Michael W. and Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2022). Modelling cosmic radiation events in the tree-ring radiocarbon record. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 478 (2266) 20220497, 1-21. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2022.0497

  • Solar energetic-particle ground-level enhancements and the solar cycle

    Owens, Mathew J., Barnard, Luke A., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Lockwood, Mike, Usoskin, Ilya and Asvestari, Eleanna (2022). Solar energetic-particle ground-level enhancements and the solar cycle. Solar Physics, 297 (8) 105, 1-19. doi: 10.1007/s11207-022-02037-x

  • Revealing exoplanet formation with the James Webb Space Telescope Aperture Masking Instrument

    Pope, Benjamin (2022). Revealing exoplanet formation with the James Webb Space Telescope Aperture Masking Instrument. Australian Physics, 59 (1), 10-16.

  • A search for transits among the delta Scuti variables in Kepler

    Hey, Daniel R., Montet, Benjamin T., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Murphy, Simon J. and Bedding, Timothy R. (2021). A search for transits among the delta Scuti variables in Kepler. Astronomical Journal, 162 (5) 204, 204. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac1b9b

  • Asteroseismology of iota Draconis and discovery of an additional long-period companion

    Hill, Michelle L., Kane, Stephen R., Campante, Tiago L., Li, Zhexing, Dalba, Paul A., Brandt, Timothy D., White, Timothy R., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Stassun, Keivan G., Fulton, Benjamin J., Corsaro, Enrico, Li, Tanda, Ong, J. M. Joel, Bedding, Timothy R., Bossini, Diego, Buzasi, Derek L., Chaplin, William J., Cunha, Margarida S., García, Rafael A., Breton, Sylvain N., Hon, Marc, Huber, Daniel, Jiang, Chen, Kayhan, Cenk, Kuszlewicz, James S., Mathur, Savita, Serenelli, Aldo and Stello, Dennis (2021). Asteroseismology of iota Draconis and discovery of an additional long-period companion. The Astronomical Journal, 162 (5) 211, 211. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac1b31

  • The population of M dwarfs observed at low radio frequencies

    Callingham, J. R., Vedantham, H. K., Shimwell, T. W., Pope, B. J. S., Davis, I. E., Best, P. N., Hardcastle, M. J., Röttgering, H. J. A., Sabater, J., Tasse, C., van Weeren, R. J., Williams, W. L., Zarka, P., de Gasperin, F. and Drabent, A. (2021). The population of M dwarfs observed at low radio frequencies. Nature Astronomy, 5 (12), 1233-1239. doi: 10.1038/s41550-021-01483-0

  • TESS Data for Asteroseismology: Photometry

    Handberg, Rasmus, Lund, Mikkel N., White, Timothy R., Hall, Oliver J., Buzasi, Derek L., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Hansen, Jonas S., von Essen, Carolina, Carboneau, Lindsey, Huber, Daniel, Vanderspek, Roland K., Fausnaugh, Michael M., Tenenbaum, Peter and Jenkins, Jon M. (2021). TESS Data for Asteroseismology: Photometry. The Astronomical Journal, 162 (4) 170, 170. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac09f1

  • Phase retrieval and design with automatic differentiation: tutorial

    Wong, Alison, Pope, Benjamin, Desdoigts, Louis, Tuthill, Peter, Norris, Barnaby and Betters, Chris (2021). Phase retrieval and design with automatic differentiation: tutorial. Journal of the Optical Society of America B: Optical Physics, 38 (9), 2465-2478. doi: 10.1364/JOSAB.432723

  • The TESS view of LOFAR radio-emitting stars

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Callingham, Joseph R., Feinstein, Adina D., Günther, Maximilian N., Vedantham, Harish K., Ansdell, Megan and Shimwell, Timothy W. (2021). The TESS view of LOFAR radio-emitting stars. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 919 (1) L10, L10. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac230c

  • Low-frequency monitoring of flare star binary CR Draconis: Long-term electron-cyclotron maser emission

    Callingham, J. R., Pope, B. J. S., Feinstein, A. D., Vedantham, H. K., Shimwell, T. W., Lamy, L., Zarka, P., Veken, K., Toet, S., Sabater, J., Tasse, C., Best, P. N., van Weeren, R. J. and Ray, T. P. (2021). Low-frequency monitoring of flare star binary CR Draconis: Long-term electron-cyclotron maser emission. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 648 A13, A13. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039144

  • Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Pueyo, Laurent, Xin, Yinzi and Tuthill, Peter G. (2021). Kernel phase and coronagraphy with automatic differentiation. The Astrophysical Journal, 907 (1) 40, 1-14. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abcb00

  • The extreme colliding-wind system Apep: resolved imagery of the central binary and dust plume in the infrared

    Han, Y., Tuthill, P. G., Lau, R. M., Soulain, A., Callingham, J. R., Williams, P. M., Crowther, P. A., Pope, B. J. S. and Marcote, B. (2020). The extreme colliding-wind system Apep: resolved imagery of the central binary and dust plume in the infrared. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 498 (4), 5604-5619. doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa2349

  • A mystery in Chamaeleon: serendipitous discovery of a galactic symbiotic nova

    Lancaster, Lachlan, Greene, Jenny E., Ting, Yuan-Sen, Koposov, Sergey E., Pope, Benjamin J. S. and Beaton, Rachael L. (2020). A mystery in Chamaeleon: serendipitous discovery of a galactic symbiotic nova. Astronomical Journal, 160 (3) 125, 125. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/aba435

  • Maelstrom: a Python package for identifying companions to pulsating stars from their light travel time variations

    Hey, Daniel, Murphy, Simon, Foreman-Mackey, Daniel, Bedding, Timothy, Pope, Benjamin and Hogg, David (2020). Maelstrom: a Python package for identifying companions to pulsating stars from their light travel time variations. Journal of Open Source Software, 5 (51) 2125. doi: 10.21105/joss.02125

  • Two Wolf-Rayet stars at the heart of colliding-wind binary Apep

    Callingham, J. R., Crowther, P. A., Williams, P. M., Tuthill, P. G., Han, Y., Pope, B. J. S. and Marcote, B. (2020). Two Wolf-Rayet stars at the heart of colliding-wind binary Apep. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 495 (3), 3323-3331. doi: 10.1093/mnras/staa1244

  • Forward modeling the orbits of companions to pulsating stars from their light travel time variations

    Hey, Daniel R., Murphy, Simon J., Foreman-Mackey, Daniel, Bedding, Timothy R., Pope, Benjamin J. S. and Hogg, David W. (2020). Forward modeling the orbits of companions to pulsating stars from their light travel time variations. Astronomical Journal, 159 (5) 202, 202. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ab7d38

  • No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Bedell, Megan, Callingham, Joseph R., Vedantham, Harish K., Snellen, Ignas A. G., Price-Whelan, Adrian M. and Shimwell, Timothy W. (2020). No massive companion to the coherent radio-emitting M Dwarf GJ 1151. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 890 (2) L19, L19. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab5b99

  • Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction

    Vedantham, H. K., Callingham, J. R., Shimwell, T. W., Tasse, C., Pope, B. J. S., Bedell, M., Snellen, I., Best, P., Hardcastle, M. J., Haverkorn, M., Mechev, A., O'Sullivan, S. P., Rottgering, H. J. A. and White, G. J. (2020). Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star-planet interaction. Nature Astronomy, 4 (6), 577-583. doi: 10.1038/s41550-020-1011-9

  • Low-frequency variability in massive stars: core generation or surface phenomenon?

    Lecoanet, Daniel, Cantiello, Matteo, Quataert, Eliot, Couston, Louis-Alexandre, Burns, Keaton J., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Jermyn, Adam S., Favier, Benjamin and Le Bars, Michael (2019). Low-frequency variability in massive stars: core generation or surface phenomenon?. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 886 (1) L15, L15. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab5446

  • Radiocarbon production events and their potential relationship with the Schwabe cycle

    Scifo, A., Kuitems, M., Neocleous, A., Pope, B. J. S., Miles, D., Jansma, E., Doeve, P., Smith, A. M., Miyake, F. and Dee, M. W. (2019). Radiocarbon production events and their potential relationship with the Schwabe cycle. Scientific Reports, 9 (1) 17056. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-53296-x

  • The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., White, Timothy R., Farr, Will M., Yu, Jie, Greklek-McKeon, Michael, Huber, Daniel, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Bedding, Timothy R., Boyajian, Tabetha, Creevey, Orlagh L. and Hogg, David W. (2019). The K2 Bright Star Survey. I. Methodology and data release. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 245 (1) ARTN 8, 8. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab3d29

  • A ghost in the toast: TESS background light produces a false “transit” across τ Ceti

    Eisner, Nora L., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Aigrain, Suzanne, Barragán, Oscar, White, Timothy R., Huang, Chelsea X., Lintott, Chris and Volkov, Andrey (2019). A ghost in the toast: TESS background light produces a false “transit” across τ Ceti. Research Notes of the AAS, 3 (10) 145, 145. doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/ab49ff

  • Extended aperture photometry of K2 RR Lyrae stars

    Plachy, Emese, Molnar, Laszlo, Bodi, Attila, Skarka, Marek, Szabo, Pal, Szabo, Robert, Klagyivik, Peter, Sodor, Adam and Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2019). Extended aperture photometry of K2 RR Lyrae stars. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 244 (2), 32. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab4132

  • The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Davies, Guy R., Hawkins, Keith, White, Timothy R., Stokholm, Amalie, Bieryla, Allyson, Latham, David W., Lucey, Madeline, Aerts, Conny, Aigrain, Suzanne, Antoci, Victoria, Bedding, Timothy R., Bowman, Dominic M., Caldwell, Douglas A., Chontos, Ashley, Esquerdo, Gilbert A., Huber, Daniel, Jofre, Paula, Murphy, Simon J., van Reeth, Timothy, Aguirre, Victor Silva and Yu, Jie (2019). The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light Curves for 102 Very Bright Stars. Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 244 (1) 18. doi: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab2c04

  • Low-frequency gravity waves in blue supergiants revealed by high-precision space photometry

    Bowman, Dominic M., Burssens, Siemen, Pedersen, May G., Johnston, Cole, Aerts, Conny, Buysschaert, Bram, Michielsen, Mathias, Tkachenko, Andrew, Rogers, Tamara M., Edemann, Philipp V. F., Ratnasingam, Rathish P., Simon-Diaz, Sergio, Castro, Norberto, Moravveji, Ehsan, Pope, Benjamin J. S., White, Timothy R. and De Cat, Peter (2019). Low-frequency gravity waves in blue supergiants revealed by high-precision space photometry. Nature Astronomy, 3 (8), 760-765. doi: 10.1038/s41550-019-0768-1

  • Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Withers, Paul, Callingham, Joseph R. and Vogt, Marissa F. (2019). Exoplanet transits with next-generation radio telescopes. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484 (1), 648-658. doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty3512

  • LoTSS-HETDEX and Gaia: Blind search for radio emission from stellar systems dominated by false positives

    Callingham, J. R., Vedantham, H. K., Pope, B. J. S., Shimwell, T. W. and the LoTSS team (2019). LoTSS-HETDEX and Gaia: Blind search for radio emission from stellar systems dominated by false positives. Research Notes of the AAS, 3 (2) 37, 37. doi: 10.3847/2515-5172/ab07c3

  • Asteroseismology of the Hyades red giant and planet host epsilon Tauri

    Arentoft, T., Grundahl, F., White, T. R., Slumstrup, D., Handberg, R., Lund, M. N., Brogaard, K., Andersen, M. F., Aguirre, V. Silva, Zhang, C., Chen, X., Yan, Z., Pope, B. J. S., Huber, D., Kjeldsen, H., Christensen-Dalsgaard, J., Jessen-Hansen, J., Antoci, V., Frandsen, S., Bedding, T. R., Palle, P. L., Garcia, R. A., Deng, L., Hon, M., Stello, D. and Jorgensen, U. G. (2019). Asteroseismology of the Hyades red giant and planet host epsilon Tauri. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 622 A190. doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201834690

  • Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor

    Callingham, J. R., Tuthill, P. G., Pope, B. J. S., Williams, P. M., Crowther, P. A., Edwards, M., Norris, B. and Kedziora-Chudczer, L. (2018). Anisotropic winds in a Wolf-Rayet binary identify a potential gamma-ray burst progenitor. Nature Astronomy, 3 (1), 82-87. doi: 10.1038/s41550-018-0617-7

  • Aldebaran b's temperate past uncovered in planet search data

    Farr, Will M., Pope, Benjamin J. S., Davies, Guy R., North, Thomas S. H., White, Timothy R., Barrett, Jim W., Miglio, Andrea, Lund, Mikkel N., Antoci, Victoria, Andersen, Mads Fredslund, Grundahl, Frank and Huber, Daniel (2018). Aldebaran b's temperate past uncovered in planet search data. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 865 (2) L20, L20. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aadfde

  • Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades

    White, T. R., Pope, B. J. S., Antoci, V., Papics, P. I., Aerts, C., Gies, D. R., Gordon, K., Huber, D., Schaefer, G. H., Aigrain, S., Albrecht, S., Barclay, T., Barentsen, G., Beck, P. G., Bedding, T. R., Andersen, M. Fredslund, Grundahl, F., Howell, S. B., Ireland, M. J., Murphy, S. J., Nielsen, M. B., Aguirre, V. Silva and Tuthill, P. G. (2017). Beyond the Kepler/K2 bright limit: variability in the seven brightest members of the Pleiades. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 471 (3), 2882-2901. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stx1050

  • A low-mass exoplanet candidate detected by K2 transiting the Praesepe M Dwarf JS 183

    Pepper, Joshua, Gillen, Ed, Parviainen, Hannu, Hillenbrand, Lynne A., Cody, Ann Marie, Aigrain, Suzanne, Stauffer, John, Vrba, Frederick J., David, Trevor, Lillo-Box, Jorge, Stassun, Keivan G., Conroy, Kyle E., Pope, Benjamin J. S. and Barrado, David (2017). A low-mass exoplanet candidate detected by K2 transiting the Praesepe M Dwarf JS 183. Astronomical Journal, 153 (4) 177, 177. doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/aa62ab

  • Testing stellar evolution models with the retired A star HD 185351

    Hjorringgaard, J. G., Aguirre, V. Silva, White, T. R., Huber, D., Pope, B. J. S., Casagrande, L., Justesen, A. B. and Christensen-Dalsgaard, J. (2017). Testing stellar evolution models with the retired A star HD 185351. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 464 (3), 3713-3719. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw2559

  • Kernel phase and kernel amplitude in Fizeau imaging

    Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2016). Kernel phase and kernel amplitude in Fizeau imaging. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 463 (4), 3573-3581. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw2215

  • Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6

    Pope, Benjamin J. S., Parviainen, Hannu and Aigrain, Suzanne (2016). Transiting exoplanet candidates from K2 Campaigns 5 and 6. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 461 (4), 3399-3409. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw1373

  • Anchoring historical sequences using a new source of astro-chronological tie-points

    Dee, Michael W. and Pope, Benjamin J. S. (2016). Anchoring historical sequences using a new source of astro-chronological tie-points. Proceedings of the Royal Society A-Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 472 (2192) 20160263, 20160263. doi: 10.1098/rspa.2016.0263

  • K2SC: flexible systematics correction and detrending of K2 light curves using Gaussian process regression

    Aigrain, S., Parviainen, H. and Pope, B. J. S. (2016). K2SC: flexible systematics correction and detrending of K2 light curves using Gaussian process regression. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 459 (3), 2408-2419. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw706

  • The Palomar kernel-phase experiment: testing kernel phase interferometry for ground-based astronomical observations

    Pope, Benjamin, Tuthill, Peter, Hinkley, Sasha, Ireland, Michael J., Greenbaum, Alexandra, Latyshev, Alexey, Monnier, John D. and Martinache, Frantz (2016). The Palomar kernel-phase experiment: testing kernel phase interferometry for ground-based astronomical observations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 455 (2), 1647-1653. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stv2442

  • Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data

    Pope, B. J. S., White, T. R., Huber, D., Murphy, S. J., Bedding, T. R., Caldwell, D. A., Sarai, A., Aigrain, S. and Barclay, T. (2016). Photometry of very bright stars with Kepler and K2 smear data. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 455 (1), L36-L40. doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv143

  • HII 2407: an eclipsing binary revealed by K2 observations of the Pleiades

    David, Trevor J., Stauffer, John, Hillenbrand, Lynne A., Cody, Ann Marie, Conroy, Kyle, Stassun, Keivan G., Pope, Benjamin, Aigrain, Suzanne, Gillen, Ed, Cameron, Andrew Collier, Barrado, David, Rebull, L. M., Isaacson, Howard, Marcy, Geoffrey W., Zhang, Celia, Riddle, Reed L., Ziegler, Carl, Law, Nicholas M. and Baranec, Christoph (2015). HII 2407: an eclipsing binary revealed by K2 observations of the Pleiades. Astrophysical Journal, 814 (1) 62. doi: 10.1088/0004-637x/814/1/62

  • A demonstration of wavefront sensing and mirror phasing from the image domain

    Pope, Benjamin, Cvetojevic, Nick, Cheetham, Anthony, Martinache, Frantz, Norris, Barnaby and Tuthill, Peter (2014). A demonstration of wavefront sensing and mirror phasing from the image domain. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 440 (1), 125-133. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stu218

  • Interferometric radii of bright Kepler stars with the CHARA Array: theta Cygni and 16 Cygni A and B

    White, T. R., Huber, D., Maestro, V., Bedding, T. R., Ireland, M. J., Baron, F., Boyajian, T. S., Che, X., Monnier, J. D., Pope, B. J. S., Roettenbacher, R. M., Stello, D., Tuthill, P. G., Farrington, C. D., Goldfinger, P. J., McAlister, H. A., Schaefer, G. H., Sturmann, J., Sturmann, L., ten Brummelaar, T. A. and Turner, N. H. (2013). Interferometric radii of bright Kepler stars with the CHARA Array: theta Cygni and 16 Cygni A and B. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 433 (2), 1262-1270. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stt802

  • Dancing in the dark: new brown dwarf binaries from kernel phase interferometry

    Pope, Benjamin, Martinache, Frantz and Tuthill, Peter (2013). Dancing in the dark: new brown dwarf binaries from kernel phase interferometry. Astrophysical Journal, 767 (2), 110. doi: 10.1088/0004-637x/767/2/110

  • Spatial dispersion in three-dimensional drawn magnetic metamaterials

    Tuniz, Alessandro, Pope, Benjamin, Wang, Anna, Large, Maryanne C. J., Atakaramians, Shaghik, Min, Seong-Sik, Pogson, Elise M., Lewis, Roger A., Bendavid, Avi, Argyros, Alexander, Fleming, Simon C. and Kuhlmey, Boris T. (2012). Spatial dispersion in three-dimensional drawn magnetic metamaterials. Optics Express, 20 (11), 11924-11935. doi: 10.1364/oe.20.011924

Conference Publication

  • Optical Design, Analysis, and Calibration using ∂Lux

    Desdoigts, Louis, Pope, Benjamin and Tuthill, Peter (2022). Optical Design, Analysis, and Calibration using ∂Lux. SPIE Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, Montreal, QC Canada, 17–22 July 2022. Bellingham, WA United States: SPIE. doi: 10.1117/12.2629774

  • The TOLIMAN space telescope

    Tuthill, Peter, Bendek, Eduardo, Guyon, Olivier, Horton, Anthony, Jeffries, Bryn, Jovanovic, Nemanja, Klupar, Pete, Larkin, Kieren, Norris, Bernaby, Pope, Benjamin and Shao, Mike (2018). The TOLIMAN space telescope. Conference on Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging VI, Austin, TX, United States, 11-15 June, 2018. Bellingham, WA, United States: S P I E - International Society for Optical Engineering. doi: 10.1117/12.2313269

  • Planet formation imager: Project update

    Monnier, John D., Ireland, Michael, Kraus, Stefan, Alonso-Herrero, Almudena, Bonsor, Amy, Baron, Fabien, Bayo, Amelia, Berger, Jean-Philippe, Boyajian, Tabetha, Chiavassa, Andrea, Ciardi, David, Creech-Eakman, Michelle, De Wit, Willem-Jan, Defrère, Denis, Dong, Ruobing, Duchêne, Gaspard, Espaillat, Catherine, Gallenne, Alexandre, Gandhi, Poshak, Gonzalez, Jean-Francois, Haniff, Chris, Hoenig, Sebastian, Ilee, John, Isella, Andrea, Jensen, Eric, Juhasz, Attila, Kane, Stephen, Kishimoto, Makoto, Kley, Wilhelm ... Zúñiga-Fernández, Sebastian (2018). Planet formation imager: Project update. SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation,, Austin, TX United States, 10-15 June 2018. Bellingham, WA United States: SPIE. doi: 10.1117/12.2312683

  • Supernovae and single-year anomalies in the atmospheric radiocarbon record

    Dee, Michael, Pope, Benjamin, Miles, Daniel, Manning, Sturt and Miyake, Fusa (2017). Supernovae and single-year anomalies in the atmospheric radiocarbon record. 22nd International Radiocarbon Conference, Dakar, Senegal, 16-20 November, 2015. New York, NY, United States: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/rdc.2016.50

  • Planet Formation Imager (PFI): Science vision and key requirements

    Kraus, Stefan, Monnier, John D., Ireland, Michael J., Duchêne, Gaspard, Espaillat, Catherine, Hönig, Sebastian, Juhasz, Attila, Mordasini, Chris, Olofsson, Johan, Paladini, Claudia, Stassun, Keivan, Turner, Neal, Vasisht, Gautam, Harries, Tim J., Bate, Matthew R., Gonzalez, Jean-François, Matter, Alexis, Zhu, Zhaohuan, Panic, Olja, Regaly, Zsolt, Morbidelli, Alessandro, Meru, Farzana, Wolf, Sebastian, Ilee, John, Berger, Jean-Philippe, Zhao, Ming, Kral, Quentin, Morlok, Andreas, Bonsor, Amy ... Rosotti, Giovanni (2016). Planet Formation Imager (PFI): Science vision and key requirements. Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging V, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, 27 June - 1 July 2016. Bellingham, WA United States: SPIE. doi: 10.1117/12.2231067

  • Non-redundant masking ideas on JWST

    Sivaramakrishnan, Anand, Cheetham, Anthony, Greenbaum, Alexandra Z., Tuthill, Peter G., Acton, D. Scott, Pope, Benjamin, Martinache, Frantz, Thatte, Deepashri and Nelan, Edmund P. (2014). Non-redundant masking ideas on JWST. Conference on Space Telescopes and Instrumentation - Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wave, Montreal, Canada, 22-27 June, 2014. Bellingham, WA, United States: S P I E - International Society for Optical Engineering. doi: 10.1117/12.2056639

  • Wavefront sensing from the image domain with the Oxford-SWIFT integral field spectrograph

    Pope, Benjamin, Thatte, Niranjan, Burruss, Rick, Tecza, Matthias, Clarke, Fraser and Cotter, Garret (2014). Wavefront sensing from the image domain with the Oxford-SWIFT integral field spectrograph. Conference on Adaptive Optics Systems IV, Montreal, Canada, 22-27 June, 2014. Bellingham, WA, United States: S P I E - International Society for Optical Engineering. doi: 10.1117/12.2055334

  • Photonic technologies for a pupil remapping interferometer

    Tuthill, Peter, Jovanovic, Nemanja, Lacour, Sylvestre, Lehmann, Andrew, Ams, Martin, Marshall, Graham, Lawrence, Jon, Withford, Michael, Robertson, Gordon, Ireland, Michael, Pope, Benjamin and Stewart, Paul (2010). Photonic technologies for a pupil remapping interferometer. Conference on Optical and Infrared Interferometry II, San Diego, CA, United States, 27 June-2 July, 2010. Bellingham, WA, United States: S P I E - International Society for Optical Engineering. doi: 10.1117/12.856770

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Observing Naked-Eye Stars and their Planets with TESS

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Naked-Eye Stars and Their Planets with TESS

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Weighing supermassive black holes with the Dark Energy Survey

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • Studying Stellar Flares and Cosmic Explosions - using Tree Rings!

    Honours Projects Available

    Radiocarbon dating is used by archaeologists to determine the ages of wooden artefacts and remains of living things, by measuring how much carbon-13 has decayed to carbon-12 since the material last took in fresh carbon from the air. The amount of carbon-13 in the atmosphere has slowly varied over time due to solar activity and volcanic eruptions, so to calibrate their radiocarbon dates, archaeologists use precise measurements of tree rings of known age. With alternating patterns of slow and fast growth, tree rings form a barcode pattern that can be matched to libraries stretching back millennia, giving us precise radiocarbon references for almost any year since the last Ice Age.

    In 2012, a remarkable discovery was made by Fusa Miyake: in 774 AD, there was a huge spike in radiocarbon all over the world, that decayed over the course of a year or two, and may have been associated with powerful aurorae noted by mediaeval monks. It was almost certainly astrophysical in origin. Now several 'Miyake events' have been discovered, and astronomers wonder: was this a powerful solar flare? A supernova? Or the result of a 'magnetar burst', the powerful blast of a magnetised neutron star rearranging itself.

    New radiocarbon data in the IntCal20 record are ripe for analysis, by statistically digging into the vast new dataset to find new Miyake events hiding in the noise. We can then determine the true rate of their occurrence, their amplitude and timing, and help narrow down the astrophysical origin of this event. This is an ideal Honours project for a student with strong Python skills and an interest in statistics and interdisciplinary studies.

  • SETI - Fermi Paradox and Interstellar Colonization

    There are pretty open-ended projects, only at Honours level, available in modelling interstellar and intergalactic travel and colonization for understanding the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the Fermi Paradox. For example - how easy is intergalactic travel, really, in an expanding universe? Full relativistic calculations of this would shed light on whether recent studies, suggesting 'grabby aliens' could rapidly conquer the whole universe, are realistic. As another example - what would our ability be to resist colonization of our own solar system by an external civilization? There is an asymmetry here - where it takes enormous energy to achieve interstellar travel, planetary defence against natural asteroids and comets in our own solar system is already within our captabilities. How easily would this be adapted to face hostile efforts - and what consequences would this have politically, legally, and for the Fermi Paradox?

  • The Dawn of Exoplanet Radio Astronomy

    Apply for PhD Positions through RTP

    Honours Projects Available

    Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered with optical astronomy, whether by using the Doppler effect to see the planet pulling its star back and forth (the radial velocity method, which won Didier Queloz & Michel Mayor the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics), or looking for the dip in brightness as a planet passes in front of a star (the transit method). In our Solar System, the Sun, Earth, and the gas giants are bright sources of radio waves, which tell us a great deal about their magnetic fields and interactions, and for decades astronomers have searched for these effects in more distant planetary systems. Only a couple of the closest stars have been detected in radio waves - otherwise most radio sources are exotic stellar remnants, or black holes at the centres of galaxies. A handful of planets have been discovered by radio astronomy around neutron stars, but the search for radio emission from exoplanets around ordinary stars has until recently not yielded results.

    A controversial new discovery by the LOFAR radio telescope in Europe may have opened the window to an important new way to discover and understand exoplanets. LOFAR has found the nearby old, quiet red dwarf GJ 1151 was found to emit circularly polarized radio waves, which we have interpreted as evidence of star-planet magnetic interaction. RV instruments have searched for such a short-period planet, with inconclusive and controversial results. There are other systems we don't believe to be from planetary interactions, but might be new and interesting stellar astrophysics. With many more detections on the way from LOFAR, this could be the beginning of exoplanet radio astronomy. LOFAR is a pathfinder for the recently-approved Square Kilometre Array to be built in Australia, which will be nearly an order of magnitude more sensitive, with the potential to discover hundreds or thousands of these systems.

    I have been involved in this project from the beginning, particularly in optical follow-up to search for these planets and understand these stars with ground-based telescopes and satellite data. I have also published theoretical work on what to expect from exoplanet radio observations. There are Honours and PhD projects available in:

    • Helping radial-velocity and TESS photometry follow-up of radio-detected stars
    • Theoretical predictions of discoveries with the SKA

    These would be great projects for students wanting to do a lot of classical observational astronomy, or who want to get to grips with plasma physics.

  • Designing Particle Accelerators with Automatic Differentiation

    An Honours project offered in collaboration with Dr Tessa Charles, University of Liverpool, UK.

    In a recent paper, our group showed you could use the technology underlying deep learning - automatic differentiation - to design complicated optical systems. Using software like TensorFlow or Google Jax, you can calculate exact derivatives of the outputs of almost any numerical code - such as a physics simulation. This means if you can simulate a system, you can design improvements by gradient descent - or roll it together with a neural network for 'simulation intelligence' machine learning!

    With my collaborator Tessa Charles, we think we can apply these ideas beyond just optics, and improve particle accelerator technology.

    The simplest particle accelerator component to model and optimize, we think, would be a "bunch compressor" - a set of just 4 dipole magnets that bends a bunch of particles in a beam out and back again, compressing it longitudinally. We would have to simulate a Monte Carlo particle transport model accounting for the "microbunching instability", in which electron bunches self-interact via synchrotron radiation. Then we should be able to optimize magnet settings to achieve tighter particle bunches - and a proof of concept for how to design the next generation of particle accelerators.

  • Optical Design and Data Analysis with Automatic Differentiation

    Apply for PhD Positions through RTP

    Honours Projects Available

    Looking for a planet next to a star is like looking for a firefly next to a searchlight - a planet might be millions of times fainter if you're lucky, and the Earth would be billions of times fainter than the Sun to distant astronomers. The problem gets worse: if you shine a laser at a wall, you'll notice you get a big cloud of speckles around the central dot. The same thing happens looking at a star with a telescope: any optical distortions introduce clouds of speckles that spread starlight out over a wide area. Our pale blue dot would be completely washed out with stray light from the Sun, and a key challenge in astronomy is figuring out ways to manage and suppress starlight to see faint objects nearby.

    Many optical instruments exist for doing this - for example coronagraphs and interferometers - but they are a challenge to design and implement. Alternatively, you can use plain old telescopes and try to correct the speckles in post-processing on a computer. This is going to be hugely important for the new ten-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope to fulfil its promises.

    The key technology that underlies machine learning is automatic differentiation - you want to train a neural network with a million parameters, so you want to calculate exact derivatives of the loss function and use gradient descent. Thanks to the massive investment in machine learning from tech giants like Google, there are now software packages like TensorFlow and Jax that let you differentiate essentially any numerical functions you can write in (say) Python.

    We can now use this to optimize optical systems by gradient descent - the shapes and sizes of mirrors, the patterns on phase plates, and many other things. We can also use the same software to help generate better post-processing corrections.

    This is an opportunity for pretty open-ended, computationally-intensive PhD and Honours projects for students with an interest in machine learning, computer science, and high precision astronomy. You might:

    • Simulate and optimize coronagraphs
    • Measure the warping of the Hubble Space Telescope from archival data
    • Help better understand and commission the James Webb Space Telescope optics!

  • Optimizing Data Analysis with the MARVEL Radial Velocity Instrument

    We've recently been very excited to receive an ARC LIEF grant to join the international MARVEL radial velocity instrument consortium, building a four-telescope array in the Canary Islands for exoplanet hunting. There is huge potential for enhancing the instrument's precision and detecting hitherto inaccessible planets using software, whether based on deterministic physics or machine learning (or preferably both). For example, consider the Excalibur pipeline for high precision wavelength calibration (Zhao et al, 2021) or the Wobble pipeline for nonparametrically separating out stellar templates, telluric spectral lines, and precise radial velocities from HARPS data (Bedell et al, 2019).

    There are a range of possibilities for Honours or PhD projects expanding on these ideas to enhance MARVEL and other instruments, and use this to find exoplanets!

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

Astronomy, Planets, Stars, Physics, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Telescopes

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

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ORCID: 0000-0003-2595-9114

Scopus ID: 36638265400

Google Scholar ID: P7EF6ioAAAAJ

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