Matthew Kenworthy
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mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Matthew Kenworthy
@mattkenworthy.bsky.social
Professor of astronomy working at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands on the direct imaging of extrasolar planets and transits of giant ring systems || Opinions my own || Will tell Dad jokes for cash. https://kenworthy.space/
From SCExAO and CHARIS: Currie+ with a superJovian around HIP 54515 and El Morsy+ with substellar companion HIP 71618 adding to the superJovian/Brown Dwarf menagerie at 17 and 60 Jupiter masses respectively #astrodon #exoplanets
December 8, 2025 at 8:17 AM
A very exciting paper by Kral et al. on “Exomoon search with VLTI/GRAVITY around the substellar companion HD 206893 B” using astrometric measurements of the companion to search for a putative #exomoon. Half a Jupiter mass at 0.22 au maaaaybe? We’re getting closer! #astrodon #astrosci #exoplanets
November 26, 2025 at 8:52 AM
SI units for #ExoELT instruments are mass and height in Chilean Elephants (ChEl) and German Giraffes (GeGi), respectively.

I will not be taking questions at this time.
November 18, 2025 at 9:24 AM
M. Nowak discussing synergies with VLT Interferometer (VLTI) and #ELT at #ExoELT - ELT has the >30m aperture for sensitivity, but VLTI combines all 4 VLT telescopes over a 200m baseline for better angular resolution, complementing sensitivity of ELT #astrodon #astrosci
November 18, 2025 at 9:12 AM
At #ExoELT on Monday we had summaries of the #ELT instruments: METIS (Mid-IR imager and specrograph), MICADO (wide field imager), HARMONI (Near-IR IFU) and 2nd gen ANDES (R~100k spectrograph) - the hardware is suitably enormous - cryogenic dewars typically bigger than a hotel room! #astrodon
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Many #exoplanet astronomers are at #ESO headquarters near Munich to talk about #exoplanets with the Extremely Large Telescope #ELTref="/hashtag/ELT" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link">#ELT this week - first light in 2029/2030 - you can put one of the 8.4m VLT telescopes on the instrument platform of the #ELT… gulp! ☄️ #astrodon Follow along on #ExoELT
November 17, 2025 at 12:54 PM
I'm highly impressed that the ray tracing for the satellite dish is correct too - a bounce off the primary dish, up to the secondary, and back down into the receiver(!)
November 14, 2025 at 10:02 AM
‘An Overview of Exocomets’ is a very comprehensive review led by Daniela Iglesias started at an @issibern.ch meeting. I worked on Figure 1 detailing comets around the Sun, Beta Pic and a white dwarf - I’m very proud of it, and it is available on @github.com: Exocomet systems #astrodon #exoplanet
November 12, 2025 at 8:32 AM
So, I have a 2019 Macbook Pro whose battery life is now less than one hour. I asked our IT department for a quote to replace the battery, but apparently it is now considered “vintage” by Apple and would cost the best part of 1000 Euros to replace(!) or until I get the urge to fix it myself…
November 11, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Lammers and Winn “On the Exoplanet Yield of Gaia Astrometry” makes breathtaking predictions for the Gaia DR4 data release in December 2026 - around 7500 new exoplanets around nearby stars! It will be revolutionary… and indicate new nearby systems to be imaged… #astrodon #exoplanets ☄️
November 7, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Shah+ on “The nature of ASASSN-24fw’s occultation” going for an exoring/exodisk explanation for the occulter with a minimum mass of 4 Jupiters for the companion #exoplanet #astrodon
November 6, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme
Debris Disk of RZ Psc”
showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci
October 14, 2025 at 4:11 AM
A lovely morning to go rowing in #Leiden - my sculling needs improvement, but it’s fantastic to be on the water on these calm Autumn days.
October 10, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Santos-Sanz+ with “JWST occultation reveals unforeseen complexity in Chariklo’s ring system” - I’m fascinated by #exorings and seeing more activity and weirdness with small bodies in the Solar system gets me very intrigued indeed….. #astrosci #astrodon
October 9, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals
October 8, 2025 at 8:33 AM
October 3, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️
September 30, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄
September 30, 2025 at 7:34 AM
A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon
September 16, 2025 at 7:17 AM
Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”. A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon
September 12, 2025 at 7:05 AM
My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/
September 12, 2025 at 4:22 AM
Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci
September 9, 2025 at 9:29 AM
We had WISPIT 2 yesterday, and today we have van Capelleveen et al. with “WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): Two directly imaged exoplanets around the Sun-like stellar binary WISPIT 1” with 10 and 4 Jupiter mass planets at 338 and 840 au respectively #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci
August 27, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Proud supervisor moment: #LeidenObservatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen led one of two papers on our discovery of WISPIT 2b, a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet clearing a path in a circumstellar disk. Laird Close and his team saw it in H-alpha, indicating gas accretion #astrodon 🔭 🧪
August 26, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Resorting to somewhat extreme methods to focus my easily distracted self in the last week of #astronomy grant writing #AcademicChatter
August 24, 2025 at 10:31 AM