University home | Studying | Research | Business and community | Working here | Alumni and supporters | Our departments | Visiting us | About us

• Homepage
• Key Information
  • Almanac
  • Building Access
  • Building Maps
  • College Policies
  • College Structure
  • Key Academic Roles
  • Academic Groups
  • Key Professional Service Contacts
  • Staff Profiles
    • Academic Staff
    • Research Staff
    • Postgraduate Research Students
    • Professional Services Staff
    • Honorary Staff and Visitors
    • All Staff
  • Events and Colloquia
  • Useful Links
• Students
• Staff
• PGR
• Health and Safety
• Computer Support
• National Student Survey (NSS)
• Intranet Help

Prof Sasha Hinkley

• Profile
• Publications
• Personal Homepage

Prof Sasha Hinkley

Personal Homepage

Overview:

Please see my personal webpage that I manage at: http://empslocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/sh573/.  As a brief overview, I'm an experimental astrophysicist interested in high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanetary systems.  Specifically, for my PhD at Columbia University, and while a Sagan and an NSF Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, I led the development of 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 direct imaging survey for planets I carried out at the W. M. Keck Observatory while at Caltech.  In addition to a 23-hour Cycle 1 program, I am also the Principal Investigator for an approved 54-hour Early Release Science Program with the James Webb Space Telescope, working with Andy Skemer (UCSC) and Beth Biller (Edinburgh) as well as numerous other astronomers across the world. 

1. Shrishmoy Ray (currently a thrid-year PhD student) is working on the Aperture Masking Interferometry mode (one of the primary high contrast modes) for JWST which will be sensitivity to Jovian-mass planets on solar system scales. 
2. Cecilia Lazzoni is a new postdoc in my group, who has several years of expertise with imaging and spectroscopy of planetary mass companions and circumstellar disks.  
3. My next PhD student Aarynn Carter (now a Postdoc at UCSC) has carried out the most up-to-date simulations of the sensitivity of JWST to directly imaged planets  
4. My first PhD student Elisabeth Matthews, now a postdoc at MIT and Geneva, 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). 
5.  

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