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I am a fifth year astronomy Ph.D candidate at The Ohio State University.

 

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My research interests revolve around systematically and uniformly characterizing exoplanets. My first work on this theme is the paper “K2, Spitzer, and TESS Transits of Four Sub-Neptune Exoplanets”, Duck et al. 2021. This work began as my undergraduate thesis with Prof. Drake Deming. Here we reanalyze K2-36c, K2-79b,K2-167b, and K2-212b with new Spitzer observations and in the case of K2-167b the most recent TESS observations. We used the EVEREST package to efficiently detrend systematic noise in the K2 light curves, providing a photometric precision within a factor of 2 of the original Kepler mission. We then leverage the long baseline between the Spitzer and K2 observations to reduce transit central time uncertainties by an order of magnitude compared to previously published ephemeris. Our paper is available on ArXiv and accepted by the Astronomical Journal.

 

Currently, I am working with Prof. Scott Gaudi at The Ohio State University to investigate the differences in planet parameters that arise from different methods of breaking the mass radius degeneracy in the host star. In the paper currently under review, “An Exploration of Systematic Errors in Transiting Planets and Their Host Stars” Duck et al. 2023b, we re-analyze the KELT-15 system with four different methods of characterizing the host star and quantify the additional systematic uncertainties passed down to the derived planetary parameters. We find systematic differences in the inferred physical parameters of the KELT-15 system, including a 6.5% (~1.8 sigma) difference in the stellar and planetary radii based the degeneracy-breaking method.

 

In “The EBLM project X. Benchmark masses, radii and temperatures for two fully convective M-dwarfs using K2” Duck et al 2023a, I apply a similar approach to two binary systems containing and M-dwarf and an FGK host star. I analyze the host stars with several different methods and quantify the systematic uncertainties in the properties of the transiting M-dwarf.