Henriette Schwarz: Exoplanet Atmospheres and Spin

This site is an informational profile of Henriette Schwarz, an astronomer who studies planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. According to the archived pages, she held a Morrison Fellowship in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and earlier worked towards her PhD at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, within the exoplanet group led by Ignas Snellen.

What her research is about

Astronomers have found planets around well over a thousand stars in our galaxy. These worlds are called exoplanets or extrasolar planets. Schwarz’s work centres on learning what their atmospheres are made of and how they behave, using ground-based telescopes that record light at very high spectral resolution rather than relying on space missions alone. Knowing the chemistry and physical conditions of an atmosphere helps researchers understand how planetary systems take shape and change over time.

Targets and techniques

Current instruments are best suited to the biggest and hottest planets, such as hot Jupiters and young gas giants. The long-term ambition described in the archive is to refine observing methods and data-analysis tools so that smaller, cooler planets closer to Earth in character can eventually be studied too, and perhaps even be searched for signs of life.

Spin of young giant planets

One particular theme is rotation. When a young giant planet or a brown dwarf companion is observed at fine spectral detail, its spectral lines look broadened, and that broadening reveals how fast the object spins. By comparing the spin of several such bodies, the research aims to see how rotation relates to planet mass, system age and orbital distance.

Explore the site

• Publications: the peer-reviewed papers she has co-authored.
• Spinning Worlds: an overview of the doctoral thesis and its chapters.
• A cross-correlation example: a short explanation of how a faint signal is pulled out of noisy data.
• About this profile: notes on the scope of this page.

This is an independent informational page built from archived material. It is not the researcher’s current official website.