Andrew Mann

Major Projects from the Young Worlds Lab

We study how planets change in their first few hundred million years. That means finding planets around young stars, measuring how old those stars are, and comparing young planets to the mature ones found by Kepler and TESS. Each project below tackles one piece of that.

Timeline of ages compressed into a human lifetime: TIDYE-1b at 3 million years is 11 days old, HIP 67522 at 17 million years is 2 months, the Pleiades at 120 million years is 1 year, a 'young' star at 300 million years is 3 years, and the Sun is 45 years. The group's targets sit in the first few years.
Where we look. If the Sun were 45 years old, TIDYE-1b would be 11 days old, HIP 67522 two months old, and the Pleiades one year old. Nearly all known planets orbit stars that are billions of years old; our group works on the first few "years."
Planet size versus orbital period for 51 young planets colored by age, over the older Kepler population
THYME

The TESS Hunt for Young and Maturing Exoplanets. Finding transiting planets in young associations to watch planets evolve.

Artist's illustration of IRAS 04125+2902 b crossing its young star, with a tilted outer disk (NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, K. Miller)
TIDYE

The TESS Investigation - Demographics of Young Exoplanets. A census of planets younger than 50 Myr, including the 3 Myr TIDYE-1b.

Looking up out of a well at a starry sky crowded with Pleiades complex stars (art: Ana Isabel Lopez Murillo)
TARS

The TESS All-Sky Rotation Survey. Rotation periods for a million nearby stars, used to map young populations around the Sun.

Cartoon of the planet TIDYE-1b crossing its spotted star, with the transit chord drawn as a dashed line
SOYSAUCE

Stellar Obliquities of Young Systems, Atmospheres Undergoing Contraction and Escape.

Individual transits of a young planet from TESS, ASTEP, and LCO, offset vertically, with best-fit models
Toddlers in Resonance

Weighing young planets with transit timing variations in near-resonant young systems.

Artist's illustration of a young star with a transiting planet (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Stellar ages

How we date stars and associations, from Gaia kinematics to rotation, variability, and lithium.

Model lithium abundance versus temperature for ages from 15 to 75 Myr
Lithium in stellar associations

Precision ages of nearby associations from their lithium content.

Hubble image of the bright binary star Alpha Centauri A and B (ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 4.0)
MOLUSC

How sure are you that there's no other star hiding there? We have a code for that.

More results

Code & data

Code

Catalogs

Data tables and spectra from older papers