SYNOPSIS

Over the past 30 years, we have discovered thousands of exoplanets, but at the same time we have also started to find other objects around these stars, including exo-comets and giant exorings, some of which might be one astronomical unit across. I will discuss some of these strange objects, how we find them and how we can investigate them.

Brief biography

Dr. Ernst de Mooij is a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University, after which he became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. Subsequently he moved to Queen’s University Belfast as the Michael West Fellow, following on from that he was an assistant professor for 3 years at Dublin City University.

His research is focused on the characterisation of exoplanets, focusing in particular on their atmospheres and the circumplanetary environment, including exorings. He has also been investigating exo-comets, particularly those orbiting beta Pictoris.