About.
Michelle is a PhD student currently enrolled in the Earth and planetary sciences program at the University of California, Riverside, with plans for graduation in March 2025. She focuses on detection and characterization of exoplanets in the habitable zone of their stars, with particular interest in lower than Earth mass exoplanet habitability. She is currently building a model to investigate how small a planet can be and still maintain liquid surface water, one of the necessary factors to support life as we know it.
Michelle also detects and refines the masses and orbits of exoplanets using a combination of radial velocity (RV), transit and astrometry. She is currently observing 10 known planet systems that have shown indications of additional planets in orbit in order to detect the long period outer companions. These observations have lead to the discovery of 3 planets so far. She was a member of the TESS-Keck Survey (TKS) team that conducted RV followup of TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) and lead the discovery paper of TOI-1386 b and c.
Michelle completed her post bachelor honours in astrophysics at University of Southern Queensland, Australia. Here Michelle worked on the occurrence rates of giant exoplanets in the habitable zone of their star and found that while giant planets are less likely to be found in the habitable zone than terrestrial planets, if each giant planet is host to more than one moon then exomoons could be more numerous than terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of their star. This work has direct implications for the fraction of stars in the galaxy that may host habitable terrestrial worlds.
Prior to this Michelle completed her bachelors in physics at University of New England, Australia where she attended San Francisco State University during her year abroad. Here she contributed to a study of the Kepler habitable zone planets where she found that the distribution of planets within the habitable zone closely mirrored the distribution of all known planets. This discovery had major implications for the opportunities of statistical analysis of this relatively small group of habitable zone planets.
Michelle is also a commercial pilot and currently holds an Australian ATPL with plans to convert this to an FAA APT.
Michelle Hill - Planet Huntress
