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Speaking about the TESS cameras at the NASA Social for the TESS launch. Photo credit, NASA.

Natalia Guerrero, cazaplanetas

I am an astronomy graduate student working with Prof. Sarah Ballard at the University of Florida. I bring together simulation, theory, and data from space- and ground-based telescopes to study the evolution and structure of systems of exoplanets orbiting M dwarfs. I am particularly interested in the dynamics of small, close-in M dwarf planets which may have been driven to high-obliquity states permitting scenarios where these planets experience "days" which last several planet "years." This sub-synchronous rotation state may be more common than previously thought, changing our notion of habitability on these planets.

Recent Publications:

  • Plausibility of Capture into High-Obliquity States for Exoplanets in the M Dwarf Habitable Zone, submitted to ApJ, 2023,  arXiv:2310.02332
From the launch of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2018 until 2021, I managed the team at the MIT TESS Science Office that picks out promising exoplanet candidates in the TESS images. Our team found thousands of TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) for observation by astronomers around the world in the TESS Follow-Up Observing Program (TFOP). My first role on TESS at MIT Kavli was on the camera flight testing team, measuring the performance of the four TESS flight cameras before launch.

Selected TESS Publications:

I'm on ADS!

Past research Projects:

  • Readout technologies for directional WIMP Dark Matter detection, arXiv:1610.02396
  • Improving Photoelectron Counting and Particle Identification in Scintillation Detectors with Bayesian Techniques, arXiv:1408.1914 
  • Update on the MiniCLEAN Dark Matter Experiment, arXiv:1403.4842