Bibiana Prinoth

Hey! I am Bibi!

I am a PhD student in Astronomy & Astrophysics at Lund Observatory in Sweden, and I work in the wonderful field of exoplanet atmosphere characterisation. More precisely, I spend my time looking at light coming from stars and I try to isolate the signal of the planetary atmospheres of planets orbiting these stars by applying the cross-correlation technique (Never heard of that? Don't worry about it! Feel free to ask, or look at this cool explanation video made by my supervisor. Or just skip that part and think of me as a little wizard magically removing the star from my data **puff**, and gone.).

The topic of my PhD is the characterisation of ultra-hot exoplanet atmospheres using high-resolution spectroscopy, where I try to not only discover what these atmospheres are made of, but also try to undestand why certain planets seem to be different than others. I work under the supervision of Jens Hoeijmakers at Lund Observatory in Sweden, and have - as of now - mostly focussed on analysing observations of ultra-hot Jupiters with high-resolution spectrographs on ground-based telescope. Only recently, I published my first first-author paper in Nature Astronomy (see Research below), where we investigated the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-189 b, and detect titanium oxide along many other elements as consituents of its atmosphere, as well as chemical inhomogeneity most likely due to dynamics. All in all: Very exciting, check it out!

Prior to that, I obtained my master's degree in Physics at ETH Zurich (ETHZ). During my master's thesis, I had a closer look at exoplanets that were detected by the radial velocity method and tried to predict their detectability using the METIS instrument on the ELT - good catch, this instrument is not up and running (yet), but theoretical predicitons are always a good thing ;). My thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Sascha Quanz, the head of the research group for Exoplanets and Habitability at ETHZ.

Research

Publications

First-authored

Titanium oxide and chemical inhomogeneity in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-189 b

Bibiana Prinoth, H. Jens Hoeijmakers,
Daniel Kitzmann et al.

Nature Astronomy, 6, 449–457 (2022)

Prinoth et al. 2022 (Nature Astronomy)
Prinoth et al. 2022 (Springer SharedIt)

Time-resolved transmission spectroscopy of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-189 b

Bibiana Prinoth, H. Jens Hoeijamkers, Stefan Pelletier et al.

A&A, XXX, forthcoming (2023)

Prinoth et al. 2023

Detection of atmospheric species and dynamics in the bloated hot Jupiter WASP-172~b with ESPRESSO

Julia V. Seidel & Bibiana Prinoth, Emil Knudstrup et al.

A&A, XXX, forthcoming (2023)

Seidel & Prinoth et al. 2023

Co-authored

3D Radiative Transfer for Exoplanet Atmospheres. gCMCRT: A GPU-accelerated MCRT Code

Elspeth K. H. Lee, Joost P. Wardenier,
Bibiana Prinoth et al.

ApJ, 929, 180 (2022)

Lee et al. 2022

The Mantis Network II: examining the 3D high-resolution observable properties of the UHJs WASP-121b and WASP-189b through GCM modelling

Elspeth K. H. Lee, Bibiana Prinoth, Daniel Kitzmann et al.

MNRAS, 517, 240-256 (2022)

Lee et al. 2022

The Mantis Network I: A standard grid of templates and masks for cross-correlation analyses of ultra-hot Jupiter transmission spectra

Daniel Kitzmann, H. Jens Hoeijmakers, Simon L. Grimm,
N. W. Borsato, A. Lueber and Bibiana Prinoth

A&A, 669, 22 (2023)

Kitzmann et al. 2023

The Mantis Network III: Expanding the limits of chemical searches within ultra hot-Jupiters. New detections of Ca I, V I, Ti I, Cr I, Ni I, Sr II, Ba II, and Tb II in KELT-9 b

Nicholas W. Borsato, H. Jens Hoeijmakers, Bibiana Prinoth et al.

A&A, XXX, forthcoming (2023)

Borsato et al. 2023

Vanadium oxide and a sharp onset of cold-trapping on a giant exoplanet

Stefan Pelletier, Björn Benneke,
Mohamad Ali-Dib, Bibiana Prinoth et al.

Nature, XXX, XX (2023)

Pelletier et al. 2023 (Nature)
Pelletier et al. 2023 (Springer SharedIt)

Posters

• Exoplanets IV (Las Vegas): Titanium oxide and chemical inhomogeneity in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-189 b [Download pdf], [Open on Zenodo]

Teaching

As part of my studies, I have been teaching students on different levels, but also for different subjects. Here you can find all the teaching materials for the courses I have been teaching in the past. Note that the courses taught at ETH Zurich were held in German, so the material is naturally also provided in German. Translations upon request.

Teaching has always been dear to my heart, and if it wasn't for astronomy and all its beauty and fascination, I'd have become a high-school teacher right after school. Learning about teaching theory and how to translate them into practise is very important to me, as well as that my materials are used by following generations. So if you feel like you'd like to use something for your own courses, please do not hesitate to contact me. So much time went into preparing certain scripts, exams and exercises, it would be a shame if they weren't passed along.

All information about teaching can be found here.

Teaching at Lund University

Since the start of my PhD, I got the opportunity to engage in teaching in different ways, such as supervise labs for students at different stages of their studies. Recently I got the opportunity to supervise the computer lab on exoplanets detection in ASTC01 (Astrobiology) at Lund University where I guided students through experimenting with the radial velocity and transit technique to search for exoplanet. Further I got the chance to teach a computer lab in FYSB21 (Mathematical Methods for Vibrations, Waves and Diffusion) on heat diffusion.

Previous teaching at ETH Zurich

During my studies at ETH Zurich, I was involved in teaching undergraduate students in physics, mathematics, interdisciplinary sciences, chemistry, and medicine as part of their introductory physics courses. Both normal exercise classes (weekly classes with exercise sheets as well as theory) and exam preparation courses (intensive course just before the exams) were part of my teaching experience at ETH Zurich. The material is in German. I am happy to give you access to the tex files of the exam preparation courses: The more people use it and improve it, the more students benefit from it! Shoot me a message if you want access to something specific. Happy to share!

While teaching Physik II for first year Bachelor students in mathematics, physics and interdisciplinary sciences (with physics / chemistry focus) in spring 2020, I was awarded the VMP Assistentenaward (in German) for excellent teaching assistance in spring semester 2020, by the association of mathematics and physics students of ETH (VMP)

Exercise classes

• Physics I & II (Sep 2018 - May 2020)
• Physics II (Feb 2020 - May 2020)

Exam preparation courses

• Physics I & II (HEST)
• Physics I & II (CHEM)
• Physics I (MATH/PHYS)
• Physics II (MATH/PHYS)

Get In Touch

Address

LUND UNIVERSITY
Division of Astrophysics
Department of Physics
Box 118
SE-221 00 Lund
Sweden

Email

bibiana [dot] prinoth [at] fysik.lu.se

Or anywhere else ...

• Twitter
• Mastodon
• Github
• LinkedIn
• ORCID

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