Josh Winn, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences, was recently awarded the Myron Lecar Prize by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.  This is an endowed lectureship established "to encourage and recognize exceptional contributions to the study of extrasolar planets in particular and theoretical astrophysics in general.”

Josh gave his lecture, titled “The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite” on October 1st.  The abstract is below and a recording of the lecture can be found on youtube.

Congratulations, Josh!

A transiting planet invites us to measure its size, mass, atmospheric composition, and other characteristics. However, the invitation can only be accepted if the planet's host star is bright enough for precise follow-up observations. Finding the brightest and most observationally favorable systems is the ongoing mission of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Conceived in 2006 in Cambridge as a partnership between MIT and the Center for Astrophysics, TESS was ultimately launched in 2018 as a NASA Explorer Mission. TESS uses four 10-cm telescopes to repeatedly image a 24 x 96 degree field of view, which is switched every 27 days to progressively cover the entire sky. So far, TESS data have resulted in 7000 planet candidates. Hundreds of planetary mass measurements have helped to distinguish between rocky "super-Earths" and lower-density "mini-Neptunes", while observations with the James Webb Space Telescope are starting to reveal the secrets of their atmospheres. More broadly, TESS probes the optical variability of a wide range of astronomical objects, including stars, asteroids, comets, supernovae, and active galactic nuclei.