A team led by astrophysicist Emily Rickman has announced the direct detection of a new benchmark brown dwarf around the star HD13724. Brown dwarfs, objects that are bigger than a planet but not quite a star, are important analogues to understand atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars.
Planet hunters at Geneva Observatory have been carrying out an ongoing planet search using a technique called ‘radial velocities’ for the past 20 years on a telescope located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. In a paper led by researcher Emily Rickman they report the discovery of 3 new massive planets and 2 low mass brown dwarfs (objects that are bigger than a planet, but not quite a star).
Emily is a PhD researcher at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her work involves hunting for planets using a technique called direct imaging at some of the world’s biggest telescopes. She completed her Masters in Physics and Astrophysics between the University of Sheffield and the Australian National University where she got to complete research in both planet hunting and binary star systems.
