Where are all the Exo-Earths? The search for Earth-like planets addresses one of humanity’s deepest questions: are we alone? To find exo-Earths, we observe the back-and-forth gravitational tug on thei

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Where are all the Exo-Earths? The search for Earth-like planets addresses one of humanity’s deepest questions: are we alone? To find exo-Earths, we observe the back-and-forth gravitational tug on their stars with extremely precise radial velocity (EPRV) spectrographs. The most modern EPRV instruments just achieve the 10 cm/s precision needed to detect an exo-Earth: the star’s own spots and pulsation impose a noise floor many times this level, and sophisticated computational techniques are needed to identify planets. With access to proprietary data from three of the world’s best planet-hunting spectrographs, we aim to develop a machine-learned model of stellar spectra and instrumental quirks, and use this to uncover planets already observed but hidden in our data.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5101 - Astronomical Sciences. Lead: A/Prof Benjamin Pope