Welcome!

This is the website for Prof. Jacob Bean's group in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. The main theme of the group's research is the observational study of planets outside the solar system ("exoplanets"). We use ground- and space-based telescopes to detect and characterize these worlds. We are also building new instruments as part of our push towards identifying other Earth-like planets.

Prospective graduate students: I am always open to taking on new students who are interested in exoplanet studies and/or instrumentation. You are encouraged to apply to U. Chicago for grad school if you are interested in these topics. Admissions are made at the department level, rather than by individual faculty. If you are admitted then we can talk in detail about the opportunities here. Unfortunately, I do not respond to email inquiries about available research projets due to the volume of such requests. Please do not take this as a lack of interest on my part!

News

11/29/2023: Congratulations to postdoc Rafael Luque for leading the discovery of a six planet resonant systen. See the paper in Nature and the UChicago press release.


6/14/2023: MAROON-X has been used to make the first detection of VO in an exoplanet and to study titanium cold trapping. See the paper by Pelletier et al. in Nature and the NOIRLab press release.


5/10/2023: Our paper on the JWST phase curve of GJ1214b is now out. See the paper at Nature, the companion paper on the transmission spectrum, the UChicago news story, and the movie.