Beatriz Campos Estrada, PhD

🚨 The schedule for the MEME 2026 main event is ready 🚨
Join us on January 30th at 17:00 (CET) to hear the talks by Anja C. Andersen and Adam Dipert 🔭🧪

✨ If you want your memes featured in this year’s exhibition please submit them through our website asap ✨
massiveexoplanetmemeexhibition.com/home

Deadline is 15th of Jan, so there is still time to apply! :)

Happy to share the first paper from the SPACE Program, led by my student Angelique Kahle! she observed a hot little sub-Neptune, HD 86226c (Rp = 2.3 Re; equilibrium temp = 1300 K). arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13439

The spectrum is *really* flat ! here's the amplitude compared to other gaseous planets.

A companion star …. Inside Betelgeuse’s atmosphere…. You think you know some stuff about the Universe but there’s always more surprises! 🙃🔭✨

Geometric Considerations in Hot Jupiter Magnetic Drag Models Magnetic fields are expected to impact the atmospheric dynamics of hot and ultra-hot Jupiters due to their increased ionization fractions, compared to that of cooler exoplanets, but our ability to mod...

My paper with Tom Evans-Soma and Nathan Mayne on magnetic drag models is now accepted and up on the arXiv. For a quick summary, look at the PDF of my Exoclimes poster that I shared last week.

www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.08511

Excited to be at Exoclimes (@exoclimes.bsky.social) this week! Come find me at poster 139 🪐

I'm building a retrieval framework to help make sense of variability in brown dwarfs and directly imaged planets.

Come say hi, and we can nerd out about variable atmospheres 😊

Since many people can't make it to Exoclimes, here is my poster looking at the geometry of magnetic drag models in hot Jupiter atmospheres. There are many caveats about the applicability of these models, but they're a first step in including dayside coupling.
www.duncanchristie.net/s/exoclimes_...

As I sit at Exoclimes listening to a Zoom talk from the UK, I thought I'd share this again. When choosing where to host international meetings, we need to consider the ability of attendees to get visas in a timely manner.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

It's the biggest question there is: are we alone in the Universe? Having the tech to probe the chemical composition of distant planets is 🥳, but as this is just a 3σ result (as likely to be noise as it is likely that today is your birthday) take it with a pinch of salt.👇More on the heated debate👇 🔭🧪

Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

At some point we need to have a discussion about the ethics of participation in press releases as scientists. From today’s K2-18b saga, Nikku Madhusudhan in the press release says ‘The signal came through loud and clear’ (1/n)

Formation of Near-surface Atmospheric Inversion and Surface Inversion in Hothouse Climates A hothouse climate may develop throughout Earth's history and its warming future and on potentially habitable exoplanets near the inner edge of the habitable zone. Previous studies suggested that near...

My new paper with Feng Ding and Jun Yang has been accepted at ApJ: arxiv.org/abs/2504.05233.

In this study, we find that lower-tropospheric radiative heating is necessary but not independently sufficient to form the NAIV. Instead, the dynamic heating induced by large-scale subsidence is essential.

The 66-year-old woman kicking this guy’s ass is a retired professor of medicine with 16,000 citations on Google Scholar

Goals

If you or someone you know are interested in the postdoc or PhD positions at the IWF (OEAW) in Graz, in the exoplanets weather and climate group, remember I am available to talk about my experience 🚩

What do people use to archive their twitter accounts? I want to finally do this and delete my account for good.

Trans 👏 people 👏 are 👏 not 👏 invisible 👏 Lady Gaga saying what needs to be said as always #Grammys

A crumbling exoplanet spills its guts Astronomers have determined the internal composition of a distant, disintegrating planet for the first time.

New JWST science by Nick Tusay of Penn State!

Thanks @astrolisa.bsky.social for the very good writeup!

www.sciencenews.org/article/exop...

I can't agree with the fortran ahah I still find it a great language

Exoplanet memes for all the family 🔭🪐🧪👩‍🔬

thank you :D

Why not? 😁

The $\texttt{MSG}$ model for cloudy substellar atmospheres: A grid of self-consistent substellar atmosphere models with microphysical cloud formation State-of-the-art JWST observations are unveiling unprecedented views into the atmospheres of substellar objects in the infrared, further highlighting the importance of clouds. Current forward models s...

After years of sweat and tears, my PhD baby is out of the oven. I currently do not have the energy to write a thread about it. In summary: atmospheric modelling with self-consistent microphysical cloud formation is hard. Don't ignore clouds, model them properly. 🪐🔭👩‍🔬🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2501.05521

After years of waiting for another discovery of these bad boys (because I spent way too much time modelling them), finally another one has been found with TESS!!!!

REMINDER: The deadline for applying for the summer internships at the MPIA is next Wednesday, the 15th of Jan! Opportunities open for bachelor and masters students from all over the world! 🔭🧪👩‍🔬🪐⭐

🚨🔔 Job alert 🔔 🚨

ERC positions in our E-BEANS team @tcddublin.bsky.social ☘️ on exoplanetary systems (disks/long period planets/volatile delivery), starting Sep ‘25! ☄️🪐💿 🔭

3-yr Fellow: tinyurl.com/5n77ucnk
4-yr PhD: tinyurl.com/bdb3xyp3

Deadline Jan 6th ⏰
Please spread the word!

Summer internships

The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy Summer Internships are open for applications! This is an opportunity for bachelor and masters students 🤩 If you are interested in doing some exoplanets research, contact me!

More info: www.mpia.de/en/careers/i...

🔭🪐⭐🧪👩‍🔬

🚨🚨 I'm hiring!!! 🚨🚨

Postdoc and PhD positions available to join my ERC project Exo-PEA at @tcddublin.bsky.social. The project aims to understand weather in giant extrasolar worlds ☁️⚡🪐

📆 Deadline: Jan 6th

Postdoc ad: tinyurl.com/2ufcwvxf
PhD ad: tinyurl.com/5amcea6p

Please share widely! 🔭🪐

Did you know? Black Friday is named in honor of Rebecca Black, who invented Friday in 2011.

not an expert but my understanding is that its pretty much impossible to clean the smallest debris (we have to wait for them to disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere once they re-enter it). The debris can cause some problems, including making it harder to manouver satellites for example.