Observe Exoplanets with Exoplanet Watch — Rob Zellem

Originally broadcast on August 10, 2024.

In this webinar, Dr. Rob Zellem, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, first presented an overview of Exoplanet Watch. Exoplanet Watch is a citizen science project which allows people (even those without telescopes) to help researchers observe transiting exoplanets, ensuring that NASA resources such as Hubble and JWST are used efficiently. After introducing the project, Dr. Zellem then led a workshop demonstration of Exoplanet Watch's data reduction code, EXOTIC, before answering questions from the audience.

Timestamps:
00:00 Opening announcements
03:24 Introducing Rob Zellem
04:32 Presentation - Exoplanet Watch
28:38 Questions
35:20 Demonstration - EXOTIC
54:10 Q&A with Dr. Zellem
01:00:55 Closing announcements

Rob Zellem's research focuses on the characterization of the atmospheres of exoplanets using both the transit and direct imaging methods. Rob is the Deputy Project Scientist for Communications for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope where he is the primary liaison between the Roman Project Science team and Goddard's Office of Communications. He is also a member of the Roman Coronagraph Project Science team where he led the development of the science calibration plan.

He is the Project Scientist and Lead for Exoplanet Watch, a citizen science project to observe transiting exoplanets to update their ephemerides to ensure the efficiency use of large telescope time. He is the Ground-Based Sub-working Group co-lead for Pandora, whereby he is coordinating ground-based observations to support both the operations and scientific interpretation of Pandora data. He is also a co-lead for NASA’s Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) and a science team member for the NASA’s CASE contribution to ESA’s Ariel mission.

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