Matthew Kenworthy
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mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Matthew Kenworthy
@mattkenworthy.bsky.social
4.2K followers 250 following 420 posts
Professor of astronomy working at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands on the direct imaging of extrasolar planets and transits of giant ring systems || Opinions my own || Will tell Dad jokes for cash. https://kenworthy.space/
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mattkenworthy.bsky.social
A very exciting paper by Kral et al. on “Exomoon search with VLTI/GRAVITY around the substellar companion HD 206893 B” using astrometric measurements of the companion to search for a putative #exomoon. Half a Jupiter mass at 0.22 au maaaaybe? We’re getting closer! #astrodon #astrosci #exoplanets
A cartoon showing the star with two planets orbiting it. The outer planet/BD has a putative moon orbiting it, and there are two dust belts further out in the system. a set of orbital fits to the residuals from the astrometric fit. They look like a set of drunk hula hoops piled on top of each other, but definitely hinting at a signal in there.
November 26, 2025 at 8:52 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
SI units for #ExoELT instruments are mass and height in Chilean Elephants (ChEl) and German Giraffes (GeGi), respectively.

I will not be taking questions at this time.
MICADO ELT instrument with mass and height compared to 4 Chilean Elephants and one German Giraffe in a slide from Eline Tolstoy.
November 18, 2025 at 9:24 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
M. Nowak discussing synergies with VLT Interferometer (VLTI) and #ELT at #ExoELT - ELT has the >30m aperture for sensitivity, but VLTI combines all 4 VLT telescopes over a 200m baseline for better angular resolution, complementing sensitivity of ELT #astrodon #astrosci
Plot of angular separation versus achievable contrast for several astronomical instruments, including VLTI and its upgrades.
November 18, 2025 at 9:12 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
At #ExoELT on Monday we had summaries of the #ELT instruments: METIS (Mid-IR imager and specrograph), MICADO (wide field imager), HARMONI (Near-IR IFU) and 2nd gen ANDES (R~100k spectrograph) - the hardware is suitably enormous - cryogenic dewars typically bigger than a hotel room! #astrodon
A summary of the ELT instruments showing imaging and spectroscopy modes. Figure from the ANDES talk.
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Many #exoplanet astronomers are at #ESO headquarters near Munich to talk about #exoplanets with the Extremely Large Telescope #ELTref="/hashtag/ELT" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link">#ELT this week - first light in 2029/2030 - you can put one of the 8.4m VLT telescopes on the instrument platform of the #ELT… gulp! ☄️ #astrodon Follow along on #ExoELT
A graphic of the Extremely Large Telescope with one 8.4m Very large Telescope sitting on ONE of the Nasmyth platforms!
November 17, 2025 at 12:54 PM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
I'm highly impressed that the ray tracing for the satellite dish is correct too - a bounce off the primary dish, up to the secondary, and back down into the receiver(!)
November 14, 2025 at 10:02 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
‘An Overview of Exocomets’ is a very comprehensive review led by Daniela Iglesias started at an @issibern.ch meeting. I worked on Figure 1 detailing comets around the Sun, Beta Pic and a white dwarf - I’m very proud of it, and it is available on @github.com: Exocomet systems #astrodon #exoplanet ☄
A magnificent plot showing the equilibrium temperature as a proxy for distance from the Sun and two other stars, indicating the locations of debris belts, planets, and detected exocomets.
November 12, 2025 at 8:32 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
So, I have a 2019 Macbook Pro whose battery life is now less than one hour. I asked our IT department for a quote to replace the battery, but apparently it is now considered “vintage” by Apple and would cost the best part of 1000 Euros to replace(!) or until I get the urge to fix it myself…
A vintage Apple prototype with breadboard circuitry on the left, with a few straggly coloured wires reaching over to the clunky keyboard on the left. Coal chute for the power supply not visible from this angle.
November 11, 2025 at 11:16 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Lammers and Winn “On the Exoplanet Yield of Gaia Astrometry” makes breathtaking predictions for the Gaia DR4 data release in December 2026 - around 7500 new exoplanets around nearby stars! It will be revolutionary… and indicate new nearby systems to be imaged… #astrodon #exoplanets ☄️
A plot of exoplanet detections with semimajor axis versus planet mass. Scattered points show transit and radial velocity detections, with a titanic black smear of GAIA DR4 and DR5 expected detections in the upper right corner.
November 7, 2025 at 8:34 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Shah+ on “The nature of ASASSN-24fw’s occultation” going for an exoring/exodisk explanation for the occulter with a minimum mass of 4 Jupiters for the companion #exoplanet #astrodon ☄
A light curve of ASASSN-24fw over several months, showing a deep and extended eclipse that has a different depth depending on wavelength, indicating it is a dusty eclipser.
November 6, 2025 at 9:33 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme
Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci
TESS light curve of RZ Psc, showing several dog tooth-like dips indicating exocomet transits. Plot os radius of exocomet versus cumulative number count - the RZ Psc shows a distinct change in slope at 2.5km, whilst the Beta Pic distribution from des Etangs shows a single straight power law.
October 14, 2025 at 4:11 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
A lovely morning to go rowing in #Leiden - my sculling needs improvement, but it’s fantastic to be on the water on these calm Autumn days.
Two single rowing boats with orange striping sit in the water next to a wooden decking. The sky is blue and dotted with clouds, the three quarters Moon is shining in the sky to the top right. The river is flat and still, and a reflection of a windmill can be seen in the water.
October 10, 2025 at 9:34 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Santos-Sanz+ with “JWST occultation reveals unforeseen complexity in Chariklo’s ring system” - I’m fascinated by #exorings and seeing more activity and weirdness with small bodies in the Solar system gets me very intrigued indeed….. #astrosci #astrodon
A plot showing the light curve of a star passing behind Chariklo's rings. A horizontal line, with two narrow dips. Zoomed in panels showing the eclipses in detail show positive excursions from diffraction around the edge of the rings.
October 9, 2025 at 7:15 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals
A middle aged man wearing a metal helmet and what looks like welders glass in ski giggles. It is a photo from the 1950's showing army equipment.
October 8, 2025 at 8:33 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
October 3, 2025 at 1:33 PM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️
Four images showing a smooth round disk face on to our line of sight. The longest wavelength image a thin ring can be seen superimposed in the image.
September 30, 2025 at 8:01 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄
An image of the planetary companion CT Cha b shown as a red dot next to its parent star, with a spectrum from 12 to 16 microns from JWST showing several rotational and vibrational bands in emission for several carbon molecules.
September 30, 2025 at 7:34 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon ☄
Two spectra of the planet YSES 1b. The left hand spectrum shows a huge peak of Hydrogen alpha emission, and the right hand spectrum shows Calcium II triplet in emission, next to a fuzzy Sodium absorption feature.
September 16, 2025 at 7:17 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”. A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon
A coiled spiral representing proper motion plus parallax shows a fit to several astrometric points, showing that the object next to the star YSES 2 is probably a very distant M dwarf star far away in our Galaxy. Drat, damn and blast!
September 12, 2025 at 7:05 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/
A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.
September 12, 2025 at 4:22 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci
Figure from Squicciarini et al. showing three panels with a white dot on a black and blue stippled background, indicating the location of the planet in GPI and SPHERE IRDIS data.&10; Three panel image from Jones et al. showing a white dot on a stippled background. The planet is in the 11 o'clock position in all three images.
September 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
We had WISPIT 2 yesterday, and today we have van Capelleveen et al. with “WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): Two directly imaged exoplanets around the Sun-like stellar binary WISPIT 1” with 10 and 4 Jupiter mass planets at 338 and 840 au respectively #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci
A star as imaged by the SPHERE/VLT is shown, with a white ring and surrounded by white spikes, artifacts of the data reduction. Three small white points are seen near the star to the lower left. Two of them are highlighted and are images of the planets WISPIT 1b and 1c. From van Capelleveen+ (2025).
August 27, 2025 at 9:25 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Proud supervisor moment: #LeidenObservatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen led one of two papers on our discovery of WISPIT 2b, a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet clearing a path in a circumstellar disk. Laird Close and his team saw it in H-alpha, indicating gas accretion #astrodon 🔭 🧪
A series of concentric black and white ovals against a black background, with a dim red dot in the lower left of one of the paths of a black ring. The ovals are dust rings around a young star, and the red dot is a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet called WISPIT 2b.
August 26, 2025 at 11:51 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Resorting to somewhat extreme methods to focus my easily distracted self in the last week of #astronomy grant writing #AcademicChatter
A black and white photograph from a magazine showing someone from the early 20th century wearing "The Isolator", a full head helmet with two eye holes and oxygen tube, making it look like a deep sea helmet. The person is sitting at a writing desk, working diligently (one presumes) on their grant proposal.
August 24, 2025 at 10:31 AM
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Whenever someone asked in tones of awe if any astronomer read them, we'd authoritatively say "We have our top astronomers working on it." "Who?" "Top. Astronomers." cut to....
Indiana Jones demanding what's happening with the Ark of the Convenant, being told by an impatient portly man smoking a pipe that 'Top men are working on it." The Ark of the Covenant, housed in an anonymous wooden box, is seen being wheeled deep into an anonymous warehouse, filled up with similar boxes stacked up into the hazy distance.
August 11, 2025 at 11:36 AM