Pierrot Lamontagne - Physics & Astrophysics
Pierrot completes his bachelor's degree in physics at Université de Montréal in 2023. During his undergraduate studies, he completed an internship at iREx under the supervision of David Lafrenière. During this internship, he worked on the NIRISS instrument simulator on the Webb telescope, as well as on exoplanet candidate tracking with the Dragonfly telescope. He is now a Master's student under the supervision of David Lafrenière, working on data from the NIRPS instrument on the 3.6m telescope at La Silla. He is using these data to detect the presence of exoplanets around red dwarf stars using the radial velocity method. Alongside his research, Pierrot has worked as an astronomy guide at Astrolab, and has a passion for music.
Project: Physics and Astrophysics
"Have you ever dreamed of discovering planets around distant stars? My astrophysics research project offers you this incredible opportunity.
When a planet orbits a star like the Earth orbits the Sun, the star will have a back-and-forth motion relative to us. back and forth in relation to us. Even if the planet is much smaller than smaller than the star, the planet exerts a gravitational force on the star that is sufficient to to transmit a slight movement to it. So, the star in question moves away from us and then approaches us periodically. periodically, and this motion can be detected by measuring the star's light spectra of the star's light with a telescope. By observing the spectra of these stars, we can determine the mass and period of the exoplanets around them.
My team and I are studying more M-type, low-mass stars, because it's around them that we're most likely to find Earth-like stars where life could potentially exist.
To improve our detections, we combine data from two different spectrometers spectrometers: NIRPS (infrared light) and HARPS (visible light). Part of our of our project is to determine the ideal way to analyze spectra from instruments instruments that do not observe the same light.
By taking part in this project, you'll have the opportunity to analyze data from your own star in an attempt to discover a new planet. You'll learn to use programming tools to process and interpret this data. By the end of of the year, you'll have helped characterize stellar systems or perhaps even discovered new exoplanets!"