James Jenkins

I am PI of a long term effort to discover and characterise benchmark extrasolar planets (aka. exoplanets) in the southern hemisphere. The main goal is to detect short period transiting planets around bright stars where follow-up ground and space-based analysis can lead to further breakthroughs into the physics of exoplanetary atmospheres. In addition, we also aim to study and detect the lowest mass planets, down into the Earth-mass regime. We employ the radial-velocity technique to detect such systems, utilising instruments such as the HARPS spectrograph. HARPS is shown to be stable down to around 80cm/s in the long term on real stars and we aim to make use of such precision to detect planets down into the low mass rocky regime.

Studies

• Ph.D. Astrophysics, University of Hertfordshire. United Kingdom. (2007)
• B.Sc. Joint Astrophysic Course, University of Liverpool and John Moores University, United Kingdom (2003)

• Awards
• Memberships