How do astronomers discover and characterize exoplanets? It’s not as straightforward as spotting them with a telescope, like you do with stars on a clear night in a park. In this presentation, Max will delve into the methods astronomers employ to measure various aspects of exoplanets, primarily by observing their impact on their host stars. He’ll also share his research on exoplanets conducted using the WIYN 3.5m telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona.

Max Kroft is currently a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the UW-Madison Department of Astronomy, working with Dr. Thomas Beatty. He grew up North of Milwaukee, then went to UCLA for undergrad, where he obtained his B.S. in astrophysics in 2022. While there, he worked with (Nobel laureate) Dr. Andrea Ghez in the UCLA Galactic Center Group. He worked to improve the data reduction pipeline for the astrometric orbits of stars around the supermassive black hole, SgrA*, at the center of the Milky Way. Now, he works on the detection and characterization of exoplanets using a combination of space-based photometric data from TESS and ground-based spectroscopic data, primarily from WIYN. Broadly, he is interested in the formation and subsequent evolution of small exoplanets and in methodology and software that enable observations toward this end.

This meeting will take place in person at our usual Space Place classroom location. It will also be streamed live to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@madisonastronomicalsociety. Space Place is located at 2300 S. Park St., Madison, WI.