Expert Exchange: Exoplanets by the Lake II: Geoastronomy

Europlanet 2024 RI’s Expert Exchange Programme aims to support the planetary community to share expertise and best practice, and to prepare new facilities and services. The programme provides funding for short visits (up to one week).

Nimisha Verma of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany, attended the Exoplanets By the Lake II: Geoastronomy summer school from 21-26 July 2024.

In its wake, the pandemic has dramatically transformed the way that academia conducts its conferences, workshops and summer schools. Exoplanets by the Lake was intended to be a signature summer school series that aims to reinstate an interactive, in-person summer school format among participants that is not easily achievable online. In 2024, its focus was on the application of the geosciences (especially geochemistry) towards understanding exoplanets, which we term “geoastronomy”. Specifically, geoastronomy examines how the secondary atmospheres of small, rocky exoplanets are sourced by outgassing and shaped by complex processes involving their atmospheres, surfaces and interiors. The outcomes of these processes provide geological false positives for biosignature gases. Studying them has long-term implications for next-generation telescopes seeking to characterise habitable exoplanets. 

Emphasis of the summer school was on in-person interaction at an attractive, self-contained venue with at most 20 participants. The number of participants was kept small in order to encourage unrestricted, interactive discussions among exoplanet scientists of all sub-disciplines and seniority.

The event was held for 5.5 days (5 nights). The first 3 weekdays involved pedagogical lectures during the day. The last 2 days featured a mini-conference format, where a small number of invited experts shared their views and interacted with the participants. Participants had the chance to contribute short talks.


Expert Exchange Objectives covered by this visit: Early Career, Training

Find out more about the Europlanet Expert Exchange Programme.