2023 SCI-S TRAINEE PROJECTS

Below please see the list of the trainee projects being offered in 2023 by our Department. 

For any questions we refer you to the contact page: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esac-trainees/contact

• ESAC

1. Beauty in astronomy, a ML-recommender system
2. Enhancement of HILIGT, an X-ray astronomy light curve generator.
3. Seeing the invisible - black holes as lenses in the Gaia data.
4. Gaia Spectral Energy Distribution Maker
5. Exploring the link between accreting supermassive black holes and their host galaxies
6. Digital transformation of the CESAR Space Science Experiences
7. Design of Multimedia and Social Media contents for the CESAR educational activities
8. Enabling (remote) operations of CESAR Solar Observatory and operation support
9. Studying the First Galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope
10. Build Survey analytics platform with Apache Spark v3
11. Communications subsystem for a CMB calibrator CubeSat
12. Enhancing automation of SW development and quality processes with new SW tools

• ESTEC

13. Galactic Cosmic Ray characterization with the ESA JUICE mission
14. Spectral Analysis of Meteor Showers
15. Fluvial history of rivers and deltas on Mars
16. Science communication for Gaia
17. Multi-band photometric observations of exoplanet transits

at ESAC:

1. Beauty in astronomy, a ML-recommender system

ESAC supervisor: Jan Reerink
Collaborator(s): Vicente Navarro

Recent advances in supervised machine learning (ML)applied in the field of computer vision allow the identification of complex features such as the style of an image. This gives rise to many potential applications ranging from neural style transfer to generation of new images. Given public interest in ESA missions that provide visual artifacts we are looking to research the aesthetics involved in observations from planetary, heliophysics and astronomy missions. 

The goal of the project is to build a small application that enables users to access visually appealing ESA space science data from the European Space Data Centre (ESDC) through a recommender engine. This could later on be coupled with other systems, recommending these nice images based on parameters such as dates (when data was obtained), location (in the universe), features (planets, galaxies, …).

To this end the project is structured into several components:
- Literature review to identify the state of the art of implicit regression and ranking problems as applied to computer vision.
- Creating a methodology to curate a dataset with respect to a promising machine learning approach.
- Train and evaluate the corresponding model on ESA data, either training a new model from scratch or using transfer learning, ideally making use of benchmark datasets.
- Deploy model and integrate into an application/front-end (optionally based on existing prototypes developed at ESA).
- As stretch goal evaluate potential of working with organizations and communities involved in AI-generated art.

Project duration: 6 months.

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Software development (Python)
• Machine learning engineering

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

2. Enhancement of HILIGT, an X-ray astronomy light curve generator.

ESAC supervisor: Peter Kretschmar
Collaborator(s): Richard Saxton

We are looking for a trainee to continue the development of a web-based application designed to return historical light-curves of astronomical objects. 
The tool, called HILIGT (HIgh-energy LIght curve GeneraTor), currently analyses data from many X-ray astronomy satellites. We wish to extend the tool in three ways: 
1. Include important extra missions which are currently absent such as Chandra and RXTE (Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer)
2. Integrate a fast access to XMM-Newton data from within the application
3. Help to integrate the tool into the ESASky environment. 
From these three tasks the student will gain detailed knowledge of some X-ray astronomy missions, a broad awareness of X-ray data analysis, practical programming skills in modern client-server software and the possibilities which are available within the multi-wavelength, ESASky package. Thhis is a project on the borderline between science and software development.

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Programming experience in Python, Javascript experience would be nice to have
• Knowledge of Astronomy, X-ray astronomy is a plus
• Enthusiasm and curiosity are essential

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

3. Seeing the invisible - black holes as lenses in the Gaia data.

ESAC supervisor: Jose Hernandez
Collaborator(s): Alex Bombrun, Johannes Salhmann, Lukasz Wyrzykowski (Warshaw University)

There should be hundreds of millions of black holes floating in the Milky Way with masses from about 3 to 100 Solar masses. However, so far we only know of a few dozens, mostly found in binary system. Detecting a single free-floating black hole which does not interact with anything is possible solely with gravitational microlensing. This effect causes the space-time curvature of the lens (black hole, star or a planet) to act as a lens and magnify the light of a background star. Apart from the amplification, the background object temporarily changes its position on the sky in a matter of months or years. Detection of both magnification and displacement is the only way to measure the mass and distance of the lens, hence to conclude on the nature of the lens. Lensing is also a very rare phenomenon - only 1 in a million stars gets lensed and within those, only 1 in a hundred is due to a black hole. Hence we need to monitor the brightness and positions of billions of stars over many years to detect black holes.ESA's Gaia space mission allows us to do that - it scans the entire sky collecting information on the positions and brightness of 2 billion of stars in the Milky Way. The black holes are then just hiding in Gaia's vast database of observations. In this project, we will use a selection of sources based on the photometric information on microlensing events discovered during Gaia's operation. The selected candidate will investigate whether any additional signal due to microlensing is present in Gaia astrometric time series. Based on the amplitude of the signal and ground-based survey information, the nature of the lens might be deducted. Candidates for black holes might therefore be identified.

The trainee will investigate if any micro lensing signal is present in the astrometric data. First by looking at some statistical properties of the residual of the single source model fit. Then the candidate will try to fit, on a few sources, a linear model to derive the Einstein radius of the lens. In particular, the trainee will analyze the residuals of such fit and compare them with the ones obtained with single source model. During this process, the trainee might investigate the impact of different weighting schemes. The trainee should be aware that no publication based on the Gaia data can be allowed before DR4.

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• The project will require basic knowledge of gravitational microlensing.  
• Some programming experience in Python would be an advantage.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

4. Gaia Spectral Energy Distribution Maker

ESAC supervisor: Pedro García-Lario
Collaborator(s): Héctor Cánovas Cabrera, Jos de Bruijne

 Gaia is ESA’s current flagship science mission surveying the brightest ~2 billion objects in the sky and collecting astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic measurements. In addition to this goldmine of data, the Gaia Data Release 3 contains object classifications for ~1.6 billion sources, astrophysical parameters (Teff, logg, A_G, distance, …), and complementary products like all-sky surveys at various spectral ranges. The main goal of this project is to develop and implement a user-friendly tool that constructs and visualizes the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) for all the sources included in the Gaia DR3. As a first step, the trainee will use the pre-computed cross-matches included in the Gaia Archive to retrieve the photometry at different bands for a sample of Gaia DR3 stars with estimated effective temperatures, extinction values in the Gaia bands, and best-fit stellar models. The photometry will be converted from magnitudes to fluxes using the zero points and reference wavelengths provided by astronomical databases like VizieR and the Spanish Virtual Observatory. In a second step, the trainee will develop the software to visualise the observed and extinction-corrected photometry, together with the best-fit stellar model. This tool would allow to identify objects with excess emission above photospheric levels at different wavelengths, and therefore it has the potential to discover X-ray active sources, circumstellar discs, and evolved stars surrounded by dust shells. Such a tool may be offered as a new functionality in the Gaia ESA Archive.

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Most suitable for a student in astronomy with an interest in computer science and data visualization.
• Affinity with Python, ADQL, and Virtual Observatory tools is an asset but the traineeship offers ample room for improving these skills.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

5. Exploring the link between accreting supermassive black holes and their host galaxies

ESAC supervisor: Maria Santos-Lleo
Collaborator(s): Chiara Circosta, Lucia Ballo

One of the most important discoveries of the last decades is that almost every galaxy in the Universe hosts a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center. SMBHs grow by accreting gas and dust and become visible as active galactic nuclei (AGN), the most powerful nonexplosive objects in the Universe. Despite a difference in physical size of several orders of magnitude between SMBHs and their hosts, scaling relations correlating galaxy and SMBH properties have pointed toward a connection between them. SMBHs are now considered a key ingredient in galaxy evolution.  
 
Galaxy evolution models suggest that the energy produced by the AGN can affect galaxy growth, by regulating properties such as the rate of star formation. However, the details of the physics connecting AGN and their host galaxies are not clear and a comprehensive picture is still missing. The goal of the project is to perform a statistical analysis over a large sample of galaxies and search for connections between the evolutionary phase of the AGN and its host galaxy at different cosmic epochs. The analysis involves handling parameters such as AGN luminosity, stellar mass, star formation rate, etc. and exploring potential scaling relations. In particular, the study will mostly focus on investigating systematic differences in star formation rate for different types of AGN. 
 
The trainee will gain experience with a wealth of multi-wavelength data, collected for large samples of targets from the deepest extragalactic surveys in the sky (e.g., the COSMOS field). The project includes archival data from ESA missions such as Herschel in the Far-Infrared, to measure the rate of star formation in galaxies, and XMM-Newton in the X-ray, to estimate the obscuration affecting the AGN emission. They will build expertise with Bayesian statistical methods useful to search for correlations between galaxy and AGN properties. The results of the project could potentially lay the foundation of a paper.  

Duration: 4-6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Basic astrophysics background 
• Some experience with a coding language (e.g., Python, Matlab, IDL, etc.) would be essential 

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

6. Digital transformation of the CESAR Space Science Experiences

ESAC supervisor: Sandra Benítez Herrera
Collaborator(s): Beatriz González García, Juan Angel Vaquerizo

CesaR (Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research) is a joint educational programme developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and INTA-owned company Isdefe. Its objective is to provide students from European secondary schools and universities with hands-on experience in Optical and Radio Astronomy. In addition, CESAR shall contribute with outreach activities to promote Space Science and to stimulate European students' interest in Science and Technology in general and Astronomy in particular. It is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.

The CESAR Team would like to update their producs to ensure they are accessible to children of all genders and diverse backgrounds to increase their engagement in Space and STEM and increase their familiarity with Space careers. This internship should aim at adapting CESAR Science Cases to student-oriented enviroments, making use of IT applications, VR and available e-learning platforms compatible with ESA Data Protection. The existing CESAR materials will be included  in this new interactive environment, allowing students to perform the Space Science Experiences through it. This platform should also contain a back-end that permit evaluators to flexibly interact with the students individually.

Project Duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

•  Good understanding  of astronomical concepts,
• With pedagological skills, specially when interacting with 4-18 year-old children,
• Experience designing education materials for inclusive and diverse environments,
• Capable of working in international teams and alone,
• Fluent in English (reading and writing),
• Creative, Capable to meet milestones within schedules.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

7. Design of Multimedia and Social Media contents for the  the CESAR educational activities

ESAC supervisor: Sandra Benítez Herrera
Collaborator(s): Beatriz González García, Juan Angel Vaquerizo

CesaR (Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research) is a joint educational programme developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and INTA-owned company Isdefe. Its objective is to provide students from European secondary schools and universities with hands-on experience in Optical and Radio Astronomy. In addition, CESAR shall contribute with outreach activities to promote Space Science and to stimulate European students' interest in Science and Technology in general and Astronomy in particular. It is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.

This internship should aim at designing and creating new multimedia contents, in an inclusive and attractive way,  for the CesaR educational materials (Space Science Experiences, Teacher Workshops) from the existing materials and the generation of new ones. As a second activity, supporting with the design and implementation of the CESAR events disemination strategy on the social media as well as analysis and monitoring their impact.

Project Duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

•  Interest in Planetary Science, Space Science and Communications
• General multimedia knowledge,
• Knowledge of graphic design,
• Good level of editing pictures and videos,
• Social Media knowledge,
• Good level of English and Spanish, spoken and written, is required,
• Good communication skills,
• Basic HTML knowledge,
• Good understanding  of astronomical concepts,
• Familiarity with inclusive and diverse environments,
• Good skills in communicating scientific concepts to 4-18 year-old students,  
• Creativity, Capable of working in international teams and alone,  
• Capable of  meeting milestones within schedules.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

8.Enabling (remote) Operations of CESAR Solar Observatory and operation support

ESAC supervisor: Sandra Benítez Herrera
Collaborator(s): Miguel Perez Ayucar

CesaR (Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research) is a joint educational programme developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and INTA-owned company Isdefe. Its objective is to provide students from European secondary schools and universities with hands-on experience in Optical and Radio Astronomy. In addition, CESAR shall contribute with outreach activities to promote Space Science and to stimulate European students' interest in Science and Technology in general and Astronomy in particular. It is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.

During the past months the CESAR Solar Observatory has been put in manual operation mode, allowing daily images of the Sun to be obtained and processed, and shared with schools participating of the CESAR Space Science Experiences. We are now aiming for the remotization of observations to grant direct access to the schools, so teachers and students can be able to take their own observations. Moreover, continuous on-site operation support of observations is also needed to mantain the observatory in optimal conditions. This intership will have a dual dimension, working toward the remotization of the observatory and providing the necessary operational support.  

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Good knowledge of physics and mathematics, and understanding  of astronomical concepts
• Practical experience in Python programming and UNIX environments.
• Experience with image processing.
• Knowledge of programs for astronomical equipment control (dome, mount, cameras...) in particular ASCOM, Talon, Indi... 
• Knowledge in astronomical equipment for ground-based observatories
• Practical experience in amateur observing would be an asset.
• Capable of working in international teams and alone
• Fluent  in English (reading and writing) 
• Capable of  meeting milestones within schedules.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

9. Studying the First Galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope

ESAC supervisor: Rachana Bhatawdekar
Collaborator(s): Guido De Marchi, Bruno Altieri, Giovanna Giardino

Understanding the formation of the first sources that reionised the early Universe is one of the major goals of contemporary astronomy. The last decade since the installation of the Wide Field Camera 3  on the Hubble Space Telescope has seen the frontier of galaxy evolution studies pushed well into the epoch of reionisation , with galaxies being discovered out to z= 11. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Christmas day in 2021, we have entered another period of revolution in this field with a wealth of distant galaxy candidates already been reported from the Early Release Observations and the Early Release Science programs.
To this end, this project will focus on finding and studying the ultra-high redshift galaxies in the first billion years after the Big Bang using this early imaging data from JWST.  This would involve a trainee learning photometry techniques to construct multiwavelength photometry catalogs, as well as deriving galaxy properties such as photometric redshifts, luminosities, stellar masses and star-formation rates. The study will also potentially
provide targets for spectroscopic observations with JWST and it is therefore an excellent opportunity to get involved with JWST work and planning JWST observations. The results of the project could also potentially lay the foundation of a paper.

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Astrophysics background and understanding of statistics
• Some experience with coding languages (like Python, Matlab, IDL etc) is essential.
• Some experience with Unix is beneficial. 
• Knowledge of image analysis software like SExtractor, IRAF would be an asset. 

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

10. Build Survey analytics platform with Apache Spark v3

ESAC supervisor: Bruno Altieri
Collaborator(s): Sara Nieto, Pilar de Teodoror

The aim of this traineeship project is to evolve a proof of concept using Apache Spark v3.3.0 to provide added value tools as part of the Euclid archive infrastructure. The Euclid mission will generate petabytes of data and therefore a computing intensive platform close to the data is essential to perform investigations.

The project will cover the following main points:
1) Deploy Apache Spark cluster v3.x on Kubernetes cluster
2) Run simple examples on Spark running on Kubernetes
3) Build a multitenant Jupyter Lab environment connected to Spark cluster previously deployed
4) Build Machine Learning techniques (Spark MLlib) to exploit massive data sets of tabular data (catalogues) and pixel data (in FITS files): Statistics, classification, regression, clustering among others.

The traineeship project will be supported by the ESAC Science Data Centre and Science Operation Centre of Euclid, both at ESAC.

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Some programming skills will be helpful (e.g. Python, SQL, Java, ...)
• Knowledge of Apache Spark, Jupyter Notebooks, Docker and Kubernetes similar will be an asset.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

11. Communications subsystem for a CMB calibrator CubeSat

ESAC supervisor: Xavier Dupac
Collaborator(s): Julio Gallegos, Marcos López-Caniego

Our group has been working on the development of different subsystems for a CubeSat to calibrate polarized ground-based Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments. This internship will contribute to building a full system in the near future.

As an ESA trainee, you will work on the communication system, expanding the present UHF/VHF system to include an S-Band channel and to study the feasibility of an X-Band system.  The ground station is fully operational in UHF/VHF and it will be part of the work to operate and decode the signals received.  In addition, you will work on the link between the ground station and the AOCS demonstrator and, if time allows, on a link to a simulated rover vehicle.

This project includes the design of an S-band system for the present ground station, the integration of the Attitude and Orbit Control System with the UHF/VHF/S-band communication system and the power system, as well as the operation of the ground station. This project has a strong hardware aspect and you will need to work with electronics and antennas.
 

Project duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Desirable expertise or programming language: Python/Matlab/C,
• Use of microprocessors (ARM, raspberry-π, etc),
• Communication and antenna theory and some hands-on experience.
• A previous course on Spacecraft System Engineering would be an asset.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

12. Enhancing  automation of SW development and quality processes with new SW tools

ESAC supervisor: Fernando Aldea Montero
Collaborator(s): Julio Gallegos, Isa Barbarisi

The ESAC PA function provides transversal support to all missions in the department, and in particular aims to improve and automate as much as possible several key SW processes (testing, quality evaluation and license compliance verification, amongst others). The objective of this activity is to expand the range of tools that can be used for these processes, with focus in particular on the following options:
- Use of DRONE/Jenkins to improve SW license compliance verification (continuation of work done with ORT and FOSSID by another trainee).
- Evaluate Test Rail for test management and its integration with other tools used at ESAC (e.g. Selenium, RobotFramework & Cucumber).
- Evaluate available tools for DevOps in Azure.
- Improve SW quality reporting capabilities with the use of SonarQube commercial version.

Duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

•  Software engineering background.
• Knowledge of SW testing processes and tools.
• Knowledge of CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Development) processes.
• Knowledge of programming languages (e.g. Java, Python, HTML).
• Basic Knowledge of software quality assurance practices and techniques.
• Basic knowledge of software licenses and their implications.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

at ESTEC:

13. Galactic Cosmic Ray characterization with the ESA JUICE mission

ESTEC supervisor: Olivier Witasse
Collaborator(s): Marco Pinto

JUICE - JUpiter ICy moons Explorer - is the first large mission in the ESA Cosmic Vision program. The spacecraft will be launched in 2023 and will reach Jupiter in 2031. It will spend three years characterizing the Jovian system, the planet itself, its giant magnetosphere, and the icy moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. JUICE will then orbit Ganymede for almost a year. The main goal is to explore the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants. 

JUICE is equipped with a RADiation hard Electron Monitor (RADEM) to characterize the particle environment during all phases of the mission. RADEM consists of four detectors, the electron stack detector, the proton stack detector, the directionality detector, and the heavy ion detector. The instrument will be operational during the cruise phase and will allow, among many other topics, studying galactic cosmic rays. Galactic cosmic rays are protons, heavy ions, and to some extent electrons that originate outside the solar system. They propagate in the heliosphere and interact with planetary atmospheres and surfaces.

This project will study the performances of the heavy ion detector. Numerical simulations of different ion species at high energies will be performed to evaluate the response of the detector. State-of-the-art models of cosmic rays will be used to estimate the performance of the detector and to define its optimal configuration for the planned measurements. The first flight data will also be analyzed. The work will be important to fully exploit this instrument during the cruise phase of JUICE, and to understand better the propagation of galactic cosmic rays in the solar system.

References:

http://sci.esa.int/juice

O. Grasset et al., JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE): An ESA mission to orbit Ganymede and to characterise the Jupiter system, Planetary and Space Science, 78, 2013. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2012.12.002

A. Sicard-Piet, S. Bourdarie and N. Krupp, "JOSE: A New Jovian Specification Environment Model," in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 923-931, June 2011, doi: 10.1109/TNS.2010.2097276.

M. Pinto et al., Beam test results of the RADEM Engineering Model, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A, vol. 958, 1, 2020. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2019.162795

Thomas Honig et al., Multi-point galactic cosmic ray measurements between 1 and 4.5 AU over a full solar cycle, Ann. Geophys., 37, 903–918, 2019. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-37-903-2019

J. Allison et al., Recent Developments in Geant4, J. Allison et al., Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A, vol. 835, 1, Nov. 2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2016.06.125

Project Duration: 3-6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Knowledge of at least one programming language (C++ or Python are preferred).

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

14. Spectral Analysis of Meteor Showers

ESTEC supervisor: Joe Zender

One way to improve our understanding of the creation of the solar system is to unravel parameters of comets and/or the dust the comets release. The cometary dust can be measured by spacecraft, e.g. Rosetta/Philae, but also by observing the meteoroids that ablate in the Earth atmosphere. Within ESA’s Meteor Research Group, an autonomous meteor observatory is operated at the Canary Islands, named CILBO. The CILBO station observes continuous since 2010 meteors in the visual, including corresponding spectra. The available data set is large, as its acquisition is based on a frame camera (25fps).

In a recent internship, we succeeded to combine all parts of the calibration pipeline and atomic ablation model into a (nearly) automatic pipeline. The algorithm is based on the Bayesian Framework and requires quite some processing time on the ESA Science Grid computing system.

​

Figure 1 Example of acquisition of image containing spectral information of meteor

​

Figure 2 Ternary Diagram of chemical information (Fe, Mg, Na) of several meteors

Figures 1 and 2 show examples of an image containing spectral information and the result of the analysis, showing the relation of the number densities of Fe, Mg, and Na. Such information can be directly compared with the information obtained from meteorites or from spacecraft, i.e. ROSINA or COSIMA on Rosetta.

The internship is about understanding the complete algorithm and atomic ablation model, use it for all meteor spectra of some meteor showers, compare the result with existing results from meteoroid and spacecraft measurements.

Project Duration: 4 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Some knowledge – or at least curiosity – in spectral analysis, atomic physics, and Bayesian Framework would be an asset.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

15. Fluvial history of rivers and deltas on Mars

ESTEC supervisor: Elliot Sefton-Nash
Collaborator(s): Lisanne Braat

Current conditions on Mars do not support liquid water at the surface due to cold temperatures and low atmospheric pressure. However, this was different in the past. Ancient Mars had a rich fluvial history which is indicated by geomorphic features like depositional channels, deltas, valley networks, lakes and outflow channels. These geomorphic features are formed by erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment by water. By studying river and delta deposits, we can learn more about past fluvial conditions on Mars. We aim to determine how long it took to develop the observed deltas, i.e. how long was there fluvial activity? How much fluvial water was there? And what was the discharge, velocity, and water depth in these systems? A better understanding of the hydrodynamic conditions will help understand past environmental and climate conditions on Mars and they can also help determine the potential for and the preservation of past life.

In this project we will investigate deltas on satellite data using GIS software (geographical information system) and we will attempt to reconstruct deltas using hydro-morphodynamic numerical modelling (spatial grid based) to investigate the conditions at the time of formation. The focus of this investigation can be determined by the background and interests of the intern.

Project Duration: 3-6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Interest in fluvial surfce processes.
• Background in one or more of the following fields: geomorphology, surface processes, hydrology, sedimentology or similar.
• Knowledge of Matlab or Python is desired.
• Experience with grid based modelling is an advantage.
• Experience with GIS is an advantage.
• Fluency in English.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

16. Science communication for Gaia

ESTEC supervisor: Timo Prusti
Collaborator(s): Tineke Roegiers, Victoria Grinberg

Gaia is a mission currently revolutionizing astronomy. It maps the Milky Way with unprecedented precision. Its data covers almost 2 billion stars in the Milky Way but extends to the Solar System with a data set on asteroids and goes beyond the Milky Way with its data on quasars and galaxies. Work along with the Gaia mission team when Gaia Science results are highlighted to the community and while preparations for future releases kick off. Dependent on the skills of the intern, the project can be more focused on visualisation or more on science writing. Dependent on the timing this internship starts, activities will focus more on results from Gaia’s latest data release: Gaia DR3, or focus more on the preparations for the Gaia focused product release planned for release in 2023. Potential topics to be worked on (to be discussed with the intern and dependent on time available and on the skills of the intern) are: writing of stories on papers using Gaia DR3 data, help with the preparatory outreach activities for a large data release by Gaia (this involves story creation, material creation, event organisation, etc.), creation of a set of Gaia posters, creation of visualisations based on Gaia data in support of the outreach performed for the Gaia mission, the creation of sonifications based on Gaia data, and more. For more information on Gaia please check the link here.

Project Duration: 6 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Broad knowledge of astronomy, with the ability to understand new concepts quickly.
• Experience working with Gaia data would be an asset.
• Either visualisation skills or science writing skills (at least one of these skills is required). When visualisation is considered, the applicant should already be familiar with the creation of visualisations as support will focus on making attractive visualisations for outreach rather than on obtaining the skills for making visualisations. Having both visualisation and science writing skills would be an asset.  
• Proactive and social (this internship will require working a lot with different groups in the community).
• Fluency in English (both writing and speaking). Knowledge of other languages is an asset but not required.
• Experience with the development of educational material is an asset.
• Some knowledge or experience with web development, mostly being quick to learn new website tools would be an asset.

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.

17. Multi-band photometric observations of exoplanet transits

ESTEC supervisor: Ana Heras
Collaborator(s): Kate Isaak, Theresa Rank-Lueftinger

The study of exoplanets has become one of the most active fields in Astronomy. The observation of exoplanet transits on stellar disks is a powerful method that has delivered the largest number of confirmed exoplanets known to date, both by ground-based surveys and by the space missions CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits), Kepler (Kepler Space Telescope), TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite). This method allows us to determine the planetary radius and properties of the planet’s orbit, like its inclination. When light curves and transits are observed in different photometric bands, additional information can be derived on the activity of the host star, on possible stellar contaminants, and on the exoplanet atmosphere. The study of how stellar activity affects transit shapes is key for the analysis of exoplanet atmospheric spectra, as those that will be provided by JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) or Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey).    

The objective of the project is to compile a sample of Jupiter- and Neptune-size exoplanets, for which multi-band transit observations are available in the optical, and to investigate possible dependences of the transit shape and the exoplanet radius on wavelength band. We will focus on observations obtained with the ESA OGS telescope (ESA Optical Ground Station telesope) and with the MuSCAT2 instrument on the Telescopio Carlos Sánchez, both located in the Teide Observatory, Canaries, Spain. These observations will be complemented with light-curves of CoRoT, Kepler, TESS, and CHEOPS. Although these missions observe transits in one wavelength band, their bandpasses differ from each other, allowing the study and comparison of colour dependencies. 

The main tasks of the trainee will be:
- Revising and completing the data reduction of the OGS transit observations and derive the multi-band light curves. 
- Extracting the light curves of the selected objects from the CoRoT, Kepler, TESS and CHEOPS archives.
- Implementing or adapting a fitting tool (that can be based on existing publicly available software packages) for the light curves to compare the transits and determine the exoplanets radii in each wavelength band.
- Presenting the results to facilitate their analysis and discussion.

The trainee will be integrated in the activities of our Exoplanets Working Group, which meets monthly and organises two workshops a year. 

Project Duration: 4 months

Desirable expertise or programming language:

• Background in Astronomy
• Knowledge of astronomical image processing and photometry
• Programming experience in Python

To apply for this project please fill in an online application form through the following link.