Mark Booth

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Astrophysikalisches Institut und Universitäts-Sternwarte, Friedrich-Schiller Universität, Jena. I previously worked as a FONDECYT Fellow at the Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago and before that as a CSA postdoc at the Univeristy of Victoria / Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. I completed my PhD at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University in 2010 under the supervision of Mark Wyatt. My research focuses on looking at traces in the dust around stars that reveal details about the formation and evolution of these planetary systems. I carry this out using sophisticated modelling of the latest observation results from new astronomical telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) to better understand how planetary systems develop and how our own Solar System came to host the planetary system that we observe. It is much easier to observe the light from a debris disc than light from planets, which are usually detected only indirectly. Interactions between the planets and dust can result in signatures in the debris disc that can be used as markers to help in the discovery of new planets. As well as showing what is happening in the system now, debris discs can also tell us about the history of the system.