Origins Institute Lecture Series – A Census of Exoplanets in the Milky Way through Gravitational Microlensing

The Origins Institute in partnership with the McMaster Alumni Association is pleased to host a talk by Dr. Kailash C. Sahu as part of the Origins Institute Lecture Series – eColloquium.

Dr. Sahu is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and an instrument scientist for Hubble Space Telescope. His research efforts have focused on applying microlensing, transit, and relativistic deflection techniques to detect and study exoplanets, nearby stars and black holes. He currently leads two HST projects to detect isolated, stellar-mass black holes and determine their masses through gravitational lensing.

Gravitational microlensing provides a powerful technique to detect planets around faraway stars, and also planets orbiting at large distances from their parent stars. After an introduction to microlensing, Dr. Sahu will discuss the results from PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) and other microlensing networks. He will then discuss our SWEEPS transit program which used the Hubble Space Telescope to look for planets around stars in the Galactic Bulge, leading to the detection of 16 candidate planets through their transit signals. These programs suggest that planets outnumber the stars in our Galaxy. Finally, he will discuss how the upcoming Roman telescope will significantly advance the field by detecting thousands of exoplanets through microlensing.

For more information or to register for this talk, please use this Zoom link-
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/1016039868582/WN_7gWSEPJ0QtahZ8fZu5CMEA