Artist's view of the planet candidate alpha Cen Bb
Artist's impression of the planet candidate alpha Cen Bb
(ESO)

Recent Results:

2013 Jan: Surveys for new planets using the transit and radial velocity techniques are beginning to reveal the frequency with which small, short-period planets occur around main sequence stars. Using these results, I have made the first direct prediction of the number and types of such planets that will be amenable to direct characterization by high-contrast instruments on future giant segmented-mirror telescopes. I predict of order 10 planets should be accessible around stars near the Sun; these planets will have sizes from 1-8 Earth radii and be cooler than 400 K. In particular, I predict a 40% chance that a 1-2 Earth radius planet and an equilibrium temperature comparable to Earth's (200-250 K) will accessible to high-contrast thermal infrared characterization; this would be an exciting object to study! Several planets already discovered by radial velocity surveys will be accessible to these high-contrast observations, including those around the nearby stars alpha Cen, GJ 139, GJ 876, and tau Cet. In the paper, I suggest that theorists begin to explore the range of possible atmospheric and/or surface compositions of these planets, and that more work should be done to precisely characterize the stars in the solar neighborhood. Read the full paper (accepted to A and A).
IJC on San Gorgonio
IJC on Mt. San Gorgonio

About Me

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the MPIA in Heidelberg, Germany. My interests lie in exoplanet formation, detection, and characterization, and the development of instrumentation to further those pursuits. I am currently studying extrasolar planets using both photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy. I have worked for three years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I received my doctorate from UCLA. I also maintain an online repository of useful Python computing tools.

Publications, Proceedings, and Talks

Curriculum Vitae

Travel

Contact Information:

Ian J. M. Crossfield
Office: MPIA 308/4
Koenigstuhl 17
Heidelberg, D-69117, Germany