The Space Photometry Revolution of Asteroseismology and Exoplanets

Asteroseismology - the study of stellar oscillations - is one of the most powerful observational tools to study stars. Similar to how Earthquakes are used to probe Earths interior, stellar pulsation frequencies allow us to constrain the interior structure of stars across different evolutionary phases. Alongside spectacular detections of exoplanets, asteroseismology has undergone a revolution over the past few years driven by high-precision brightness measurements of thousands of stars from space-based telescopes such as the NASA Kepler Mission. In this talk I will highlight recent asteroseismic discoveries by Kepler, as well as key synergies between asteroseismology and exoplanet science to characterize fundamental properties and architectures of planetary systems. I will also discuss first results by Kepler's follow-up mission, K2, and discuss its role for studying stellar populations in our Galaxy (galactic archeology).

About Dr Huber

I was born and raised in Vienna, Austria, where I received a masters degree in Astronomy from the University of Vienna in 2007. In 2008 I moved to Sydney, Australia, and earned my PhD in Astrophysics in 2011 at the University of Sydney under supervision of Tim Bedding. From November 2011 to August 2014 I worked as a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, before returning to the School of Physics in September 2014 to take up an ARC DECRA fellowship.