UP research at the forefront of exoplanets exploration

Tiago Campante, former student and professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) and researcher at the Astrophysics Institute and Space Science (IA) is part of the team of scientists that was invited to the Better Stars, Better Planets: Exploiting the Stellar-Exoplanetary Synergy Programme.

This initiative will gather the world's most renowned experts in the fields of stellar evolution and of exoplanets, until 28 June, at the prestigious Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), located at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA).

The main goal of the programme is to "foster greater synergy between these two fields and study the combination of data collected from the space missions TESS (NASA) and GAIA (ESA)", and maybe come up with answers for specific questions such as "how many planets the size of earth are there? How are exoplanets influenced by the stellar activity?"

Tiago Campante will work on star's characterisation, specially the red giants with orbiting planets.

"To be part of the team at the Kavli Institute is the clear appreciation of my work and, of course, of IA. This is a unique opportunity to consolidate our place as a top research entity and to continue defining cutting-edge research in the field of astrophysics" Campanante enthuses.