Juliette Becker

New paper led by University of Wisconsin-Madison undergrad alum Coleman Nelson finds TOI-700d is robustly habitable, while TOI-700e sits on the edge: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108…

...with high-e migration, but warm Jupiters may be a narrow sweet spot. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.384…

New ApJ paper: Can inner planets survive when a giant becomes a hot/warm Jupiter via high-eccentricity tidal migration? Usually no. Survival requires the giant’s periastron to stay >14 mutual Hill radii away. Observed systems with hot Jupiters + inner planets are inconsistent...

AbSciCon will be in Madison, WI in May 2026! Please consider submitting an abstract to session 39, Dynamical Environments of Habitable Worlds, led by Joseph Livesey. Hope to see you all there!

Marguerite's previous work spans time-evolution of AGN disks to secular resonances in young protoplanetary disks. In this new paper, she computes where in AGN disks stellar-mass BH binaries may survive, and when they will be stochastically forced out of resonance.

Mean motion resonances (familiar from planetary systems) also govern how stellar-mass BHs migrate and merge in AGN disks. Marguerite Epstein-Martin (applying to postdocs THIS FALL) has a new paper “Mean Motion Resonances in AGN Disks” (arxiv.org/abs/2510.12895…).

Some hot Jupiters might not have traveled far. New simulations by UW-Madison recent undergrad alum Devansh Mathur show that if enough solid material is funneled inward, both a hot Jupiter and its inner companions could form in situ. Accepted to PASP: arxiv.org/abs/2510.13527…

I also wrote a blog post with a level of detail in between this post and the paper itself: becker.astro.wisc.edu/2025/10/09/new…

Published this week in ApJ by UW-Madison undergraduate Eva Stafne: General relativity might save life on planets orbiting white dwarfs. GR-driven orbital precession can suppress tidal heating that would otherwise trigger a runaway greenhouse. arxiv.org/abs/2509.26421

When stars die, could life begin? White dwarfs could possibly host planets with oceans, making them worth considering in the search for life. I wrote about the science (and surprises) of white dwarf planets at @ConversationUS theconversation.com/earth-size-sta…

@AgolEric 🤣 Both UWs are great UWs!! (and great places to take 51 Peg Fellowships!)

And so is the other 'UW' (University of Washington)!

Find more information and the application here: hsfoundation.org/programs/scien…

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, we are excited to host 51 Pegasi b Fellows in the Department of Astronomy! Applications are due October 3, 2025. This was the fellowship that I had as a postdoc, and I’d be happy to chat if you think you might be interested in applying!

Two weeks until abstracts (and requests for travel support) are due for this fall's GLEAM! gleam.astro.wisc.edu/overview/ I hope to see you here!

Far beyond Neptune lies the scattered disk — a chaotic population of icy bodies whose orbits are constantly reshaped by Neptune’s pull. In a new paper, Matthew Belyakov maps the hidden resonance network that drives their long-term evolution.

Inside the orbit of Jupiter's moon Io, sit Amalthea and Thebe - tiny, misshapen satellites. @caltech grad student Ian Brunton has been working on understanding their origins, and it's far more interesting than we could have ever expected.

We’re so happy to host GLEAM 2025 at UW–Madison this Fall, Nov 6–7! gleam.astro.wisc.edu Join us for two days of exoplanets & community with a view of the shores of Lake Mendota. No registration fee. Travel support available. Abstracts & Travel Support Requests due Sept 5th.

This video takes much longer to watch than the old one!

Part 2 of my Exoplanet Orrery is up. Part 3 still in the works. youtu.be/G86JjSnLfJI?si… via @YouTube

Definition question: Everyone in the field seems to use P~10 days as the boundary between "Hot" and "Warm" Jupiters in the literature. Does anyone know where this boundary actually came from (did a single person come up with it, and if so who / what paper)?