Physics and Astronomy

Dr Sasha Hinkley

Dr Sasha Hinkley

Professor
Physics and Astronomy

Overview:

As an Associate Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Exeter, I use leading ground- and space-based observatories with the goal of obtaining direct images and spectroscopy of extrasolar planetary systems. Specifically, during my PhD training, and while a NASA Sagan and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, I was responsible for designing, building, and commissioning an infrared imaging spectrometer for Palomar Observatory dedicated for this task. Since my arrival at Exeter, I have become an active user of ESO facilities, while continuing to mine through my large high-contrast survey for planets I carried out at the W.M.~Keck Observatory while at Caltech. Since late 2015, I have been leading, organising, and managing a team of 120 international astronomers to be among the first users of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and I am the Principal Investigator for our approved 54-hour Early Release Science program. You can find out more at my personal webpage at: http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/sh573/.
 

Students: 

  1. My first PhD student Elisabeth Matthews, now a postdoc at MIT, led our survey for planets around young stars with evidence for multiple belts of circumstellar debris using SPHERE at the VLT. Elisabeth's work uncovered a spectacular image of a nearly edge-on disk around the star HD 129590 (see paper below).
  2. My next PhD student Aarynn Carter, now a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz, made some of the first predictions about the sensitivity to Saturn and Neptune-analogues at wide orbital separations.

 

Some Selected Publications:

  1. Hinkley et al. 2021. "Discovery of an Edge-on Debris Disk around BD+45 598: A Newly Identified Member of the Beta Pictoris Moving Group" https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021ApJ...912..115H/abstract
  2. Hinkley et al. 2015. "Discovery of Seven Companions to Intermediate-Mass Stars with Extreme Mass Ratios in the Scorpius-Centaurus Association" https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJ...806L...9H/abstract
  3. Hinkley et al. 2015. "Early Results from VLT SPHERE: Long-slit Spectroscopy of 2MASS0122-2439B, a Young Companion Near the Deuterium Burning Limit." https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJ...805L..10H/abstract
  4. Matthews et al. 2017. "The First Scattered-light Image of the Debris Disk around the Sco-Cen Target HD129590." https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017ApJ...843L..12M/abstract
  5. Hinkley et al., 2011. "A New High Contrast Imaging Program at Palomar Observatory." https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011PASP..123...74H/abstract

 

 

View full profile