THE LIFE Of A GIANT EXOPLANET
I study the three populations of giant exoplanets to understand how they formed and how they evolved during their life.
When a giant planet has just formed on a wide orbit, at large separations from its host(s) star(s), we can detect it by direct imaging. With the time this exoplanet will migrate inward toward its star, its temperature will increase the closer it gets to its star. By reaching very close-in orbits the planet is in its adult age, we usually call it "hot-Jupiter" and we can detect it with the transit technique.
At some point in time after that, the host star will evolve, and it will possibly become a white dwarf. Even it fate can be hard sometimes and while planets orbiting close to the star will get engulfed or destroyed, some others on far away orbits are lucky and can survive the stellar evolution, settling down to be planets orbiting small white dwarf.
Sometimes planets orbit binary stars, and in that case after the binary evolution, the planet will be bound to a double white dwarf. These are "Magrathea" planets that we can detect with gravitational waves !
"Magrathea" is an ancient planet located in orbit around the twin suns Soulianis and Rahm ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - Douglas Adams).
the first images of an exoplanet taken by the James Webb Space Telescope
The "High Contrast Imaging Early Release Science" team (lead by Sasha Hinkley, University of Exeter) I belong to has taken the very first direct image of an exoplanet in multiple bands, with the first ever (!!) picture taken the the mid-infrared using the MIRI instrument !
The data quality is just fantastic. Surely the JWST will be making revolutionary science, of exoplanets too!
SEARCHING FOR "MAGRATHEA"
The JWST mission in a nutshell
(web page in progress)
The Ariel mission in a nutshell
The LISA mission in a nutshell
(web page in progress)
Links
The European Space Agency (ESA): ESA web-site
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): NASA web-site,
JWST/MIRI instrument: ESA web-site, NASA web-site
Ariel ESA space mission: Ariel web-site, ESA web-site
LISA ESA space mission: LISA web-site, ESA web-site
CARMENES instrument: CARMENES