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.
3/21/2021: Congratulations to Adina Feinstein for defending her Ph.D. thesis, which is titled "Young Stellar and Planetary Systems from the UV to the IR". Adina will be a Hubble Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder starting in the fall.
11/25/2022: Our second set of JWST results from the Early Release Science program are now out. See the NASA press release, the UChicago press release, and the five papers: 
8/25/2022: Our first JWST result from the Early Release Science program is the detection of CO2 in the atmosphere of WASP-39b. See the STScI press release, the UChicago press release, and the paper (Nature, in press).
