Alex Romanec

About me

I am an MSc student in the Astronomy and Astrophysics group at the University of Warwick, supervised by Daniel Bayliss and Edward Bryant. During my 12-month research degree I will be looking for orbital decay in a sample of Ultra-Short Period planets observed with the NGTS and TESS telescopes.

Research

My research project is focussing on a sample of 15 planets known as Ultra-Short Period Hot Jupiters. These are giant, gaseous planets (much like Jupiter in our own solar system) orbiting their host star with periods of 2 days or less making them the hottest planets that we know about. For these 15 in particular, we are lucky in that they can be indirectly observed with telescopes through the transit effect - the small dip in brightness seen when the planet passes between us and its host star.

In my project, I am using observations of these planets taken in the last 7 years to take precise measurements of when the planets transit. This is because when giant planets get this close to their stars, tidal interactions between the star and the planet generate friction which causes the planet to embark on a 'death spiral' into the star, in a process known as tidal decay. Depending on the decay rate, this should be observable through transit-timing analysis and if so, would allow a valuable insight into the properties of the star and this dramatic end stage of planetary evolution.