We had a terrific couple days at USYD at the 9th Australian Exoplanet workshop– the first such workshop after the worst of the Covid pandemic. There were some sixty-five in-person participants, and about ten more online, with a program featuring talks, a poster session, collaborative sessions, and a panel discussion about the future of the field.
Above:
Sergio on the power and promise of photonic lanterns.
A few of the highlights featured Marshall Perrin’s talk “Imaging Planetary Systems with JWST,” Sergio Leon-Saval’s talk (and demo!) about the applications of photonic lanterns for the field, and Michele Bannister’s planetary science talk delivered from New Zealand. Other talks featured stellar activity and rotation, asteroseismology, stellar interior models, star-planet tidal evolution, stellar and planet mapping, polarimetry of circumstellar environments, atmospheric chemistry of Hot Jupiters, evaporating atmospheres, disk kinematics, exokuiper belts, transits photometry to learn about both the planet and the star, astrometry, software, astrophotonics, and new missions and facilities— like the TOLIMAN satellite currently under development to perform interferometric astrometry on the nearest star system to hunt for planets.
Above:
Coming out of the pandemic. This plot by Dan Huber shows the number of participants over the years. (In 2018 there was
the “Planets in Peculiar Places” workshop, so we consider this one to be number nine.)
The in-person participants represented Australian institutions USYD, Macquarie University, the University of New South Wales, Australian National University, Monash University, the University of Newcastle, the University of Queensland, the University of Southern Queensland, Western Sydney University, and Sydney Observatory.
