My name is Jenna
Cann and I am a senior studying astronomy. One of the things that initially got
me interested in astronomy, and my OSCAR project, is the idea that there are so
many other worlds and places out in the Universe that are so different from
what we see in everyday life on Earth. My
current project deals with Hot Jupiters, which are Jupiter-sized exoplanets
that are orbiting very close to their host stars. Despite having a sizable atmosphere that
could feasibly circulate the heat this planet receives from its star,
astronomers have found that there is a large day-night side temperature change
– sometimes up to 1000K in magnitude. My
project deals with trying to find a physical mechanism to explain this.
This project has
helped me confirm that I do want to continue on to a research-based PhD
program. The skills I’ve honed over the
course of this semester, in modeling and theory, will prove invaluable as I
start research at a higher level.
Besides working with my advisor here at GMU, Dr. Michael Summers, I also
collaborate with an advisor, Dr. Prabal Saxena, at NASA Goddard Spaceflight
Center. Visiting Goddard and working
with my advisor there has provided me with several contacts that could be
research collaborators in the future.
My project
consists of several different parts, using both theory and models, so on any
given week I spend almost equal amounts of time working out pen and paper
derivations as I do running transit simulations or plotting real K2 data from
the Kepler telescope.
This semester, I
learned a lot about energy transfer and tidal processes in atmospheric
physics. I’ve also learned that a lot of
the questions scientists are looking to answer about exoplanets were the same
ones asked decades ago about Titan, Europa, and other planets and moons in our
Solar System. Knowing that we now know
the answers to those questions with respect to Solar System bodies, despite
them seeming so out of reach decades ago, it is extremely inspiring to think of
what we can learn from the thousands of new exoplanets we’ve discovered so far.
