Elyar Sedaghati

Intro

I am an astronomer, working at the VLT, Paranal Observatory in Chile, as a faculty member and a staff astronomer. I obtained my PhD in 2017, jointly from the German Space Agency (DLR) in Berlin and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. I am the Instrument Scientist for the FORS2 instrument, which is mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the UT1 at the VLT. I will continue to be the Instrument Scientist for its upgrade, which is FORS1, planned to arrive at Paranal towards the later parts of 2025. I am also the second Instrument Scientist for the ESPRESSO spectrograph, mounted at the Incoherent Combined Coude Focus at the VLT.

• PhD thesis

After the completion of my PhD, I was selected for the ESO Paranal fellowship, at the VLT. There I worked for 3 years as an astronomer, being the fellow responsible for the FORS2 and ESPRESSO instruments. The 4th year of my fellowship I spent at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, in Granada, Spain. After that I worked as a post-dcotoral researcher at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago.
You can view the full details of my CV below.

• Curriculum Vitae

Publications

In this study, we measured the obliquity angle of the eccentric warm Jupiter, TOI-667 b. This is particularly interesting result, and no migration theories can explain its orbital configuration. We also presented a novel method for including stellar activity indicators in modeling the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect.

In this study, we measured the obliquity angle of the sub-Saturn exoplanet HD332231b, which is typically hard to do, due to observational challenges.

Transit observations of WASP-19b with the high resolution échelle spectrograph ESPRESSO at Paranal. Cross-correlation analysis points to a possible hint for the presence of TiO in the upper atmosphere, and Chromatic Rossiter-McLaughlin anslysis confirm the super-Rayleigh scattering in the atmophere towards the near-UV wavelengths.

The first significant detection of Titanium Oxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, through spectrophotometric observations of 3 WASP-19b transits, performed with the FORS2 instrument, at the VLT.

FORS2 transmission spectroscopy of a rare giant planet around a dwarf star. Gaussian Process techniques are used to maxmise the information content from light curve analysis.

FORS2 transmission spectroscopy of WASP-17b with possible detection of potassium in the upper atmosphere.

FORS2 transmission spectroscopy of WASP-19b at the start of my PhD.

Student Supervision

I am currently supervising two PhD students, through the ESO studentship programme. They are Bibiana Prinoth (Lund University, Sweden) and Scarlett Royle (Liverpool John Moores University, the UK).

Teaching

Lecture on using Molecfit to correct telluric absorption in high resolution spectra at the ESO atmospheres 2021 workshop.

Lecture on detecting exoplanetary atmospheres using ground-based multi-object spectroscopic observations, at the ESO atmospheres 2021 workshop.

Outreach & Press Releases

Mentiras Verdaderas live on Chilean national TV, with Prof. José Masa (in Spanish).

Interview with Czech TV on life of an astronomer at Paranal

ESO virtual tour of La Silla observatory

National Geographic Explorer series appearance

Contact Me

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7444-5315

• GitHub
• linkedin
• Researchgate
• Facebook
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• Orcid

Elements

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