Ben Lakeland

Talk 1: Ben Lakeland, 3:00pm - 3:30pm

Using the sun to find earth twins
Radial-velocity (RV) spectroscopy is a vital tool in exoplanet science, both as an independent detection method and as follow-up characterization for transiting exoplanets. State-of-the-art RV spectrographs have the instrumental sensitivity to detect sub-meter-per-second variations necessary to detect small exoplanets. Despite this, detection of the smallest exoplanets is limited by the intrinsic variability of the host star.
In this seminar, I will discuss how we can use observations of our sun to improve our understanding of stellar variability. I will show that, by using a combination of resolved solar images and sun-as-a-star RVs, we can isolate the RV variability of the magnetically quiet sun. Despite most stellar-variability-mitigation techniques focussing on isolated magnetically active regions, I will demonstrate that it will be necessary to model the entire stellar surface to detect earth twins.