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Author: ktj

ERC Consolidator Grant “Evaporator” ?>

ERC Consolidator Grant “Evaporator”

Exciting times for me: my proposal for an ERC Consolidator Grant was accepted, and the project will start in May 2025. The full title is “Evaporator: The missing stellar physics component for atmospheric evaporation of exoplanets”. I’m currently hiring new postdocs and PhD students to join the group, and I’m massively looking forward to diving into this project for the next five years. I have to say, it was actually quite nerve-wrecking to do the interview; it was online only…

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5-year Leibniz grant completed ?>

5-year Leibniz grant completed

My first years at the AIP got a big boost through a funding program from the Leibniz Community for women professors. My project in that program is called “Combined evolution of star-exoplanet systems”, and (after some no-cost extensions) has been completed this summer. It funded five years of large parts of my group’s research, three PhD theses and several postdoc years. Some highlights from the project are the first solid evidence for stars experiencing spin-up through tidal interaction with their…

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New paper: evaporation of three young planets in the K2-198 system ?>

New paper: evaporation of three young planets in the K2-198 system

The latest paper of my recently graduated PhD student Laura Ketzer is now in print – and as a side note, an all-female author list spanning two different research groups at the AIP: Three young planets around the K-dwarf K2-198: high-energy environment, evaporation history, and expected future Ketzer, L.; Poppenhaeger, K.; Baratella, M.; Ilin, E., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 527, Issue 1, pp.374-385 (2024) Planets orbiting young stars are thought to experience atmospheric evaporation as a…

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Two successful PhD defenses ?>

Two successful PhD defenses

PhD defenses are always great times to celebrate. This winter we had two very successful defenses of my students Nikoleta Ilic and Laura Ketzer. Laura’s thesis is called “The impact of stellar activity evolution on atmospheric mass loss of young exoplanets” and Nikoleta’s “Stars under influence: evidence of tidal interactions between stars and substellar companions”. Both did a really excellent job in their defenses! We had good times celebrating them!

New papers: spectroscopy of the Sun and stars ?>

New papers: spectroscopy of the Sun and stars

Two new papers that my group contributed to: a study of flares on the Sun, but with the Sun seen as a star, which provides a “translation table” between stellar and solar flare observations; and spectroscopic observation of the great dimming of Beutelgeuse, which happened in 220 and was observed (among others) with the AIP’s STELLA telescope on Tenerife. A comparative study of two X2.2 and X9.3 solar flares observed with HARPS-N. Reconciling Sun-as-a-star spectroscopy and high-spatial resolution solar observations…

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New paper on exoplanets triggering stellar flares ?>

New paper on exoplanets triggering stellar flares

Magnetic star-planet interactions are thought to be able to trigger flares on the host stars, with the exoplanets acting as perturbers on magnetic structures in the stellar atmosphere. With a big flare study of star-planet systems, we found some really exiting hints that flares may be clustered in planetary orbital phase (instead of being purely stochastic, or modulated with the stellar rotation period). Exciting times ahead for further study! “Planetary perturbers: flaring star-planet interactions in Kepler and TESS” Authors: Ilin,…

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New papers: Science with the ANDES spectrograph for the ELT ?>

New papers: Science with the ANDES spectrograph for the ELT

My group is contributing the the second-light instrument suite for the Extremely Large Telescope: we are developing and building the optical-ultraviolet (UBV) part of the high-resolution spectrograph ANDES. And of course, we are also highly interested in the scientific avenues that will open up with this instrument. The two recent White Papers on exoplanetary and stellar science with ANDES lay out many of the exciting ideas that we can explore: Ground-breaking Exoplanet Science with the ANDES spectrograph at the ELT…

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Celebration barbecue ?>

Celebration barbecue

This week we had a really nice afternoon barbecue with a bunch of people I like to call “star-planet group and friends” – i.e. my own group plus other colleagues mainly from the solar group and the MHD group. We had a lot to celebrate: my postdoc Ekaterina Ilin will start a new postdoctoral position in Groningen very soon, where she will work with Harish Vedantham on radio signatures of star-planet interactions; Prachi Rahate and Joana Wokittel have successfully defended…

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Paper on tidally-induced activity in an M dwarf / brown dwarf pair ?>

Paper on tidally-induced activity in an M dwarf / brown dwarf pair

My PhD student Nikoleta Ilic has investigated a really interesting object, the close M dwarf / brown dwarf pair NLTT 41135, which forms a hierarchical wide triple system with the M dwarf NLTT 41136. Nikoleta found an elevated activity of about an order of magnitude in X-rays that is most likely caused by tidal interaction between the brown dwarf and the M dwarf. Nikoleta was able to quantify this with the help of other wide M dwarf systems from the…

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EAS conference in Krakow ?>

EAS conference in Krakow

A good chunk of my research group plus myself spent last week in Krakow/Poland at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS). First time for me: we all took a “Eurocity” train that goes directly from Berlin to Krakow and takes 7 hours. Ecofriendly, and I was actually less wrung out after the train trip than I would have been after two flights (since there are no direct plane connections between Berlin and Krakow). The conference itself was…

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