Unveiling a new population of Young Exoplanets and their Moons.
The Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS) is an astronomy-informatics multidisciplinary effort funded by Iniciativa Científica Milenio and hosted by four universities in Chile. YEMS scientific objectives involve detecting and characterizing young exoplanets and exomoons to answer the long-standing question of their formation.
Until three decades ago, scientists were skeptical that we would ever be able to find planets outside the solar system (exoplanets). Today, advances in technology and techniques have allowed the discovery of thousands of exoplanets and arrived at the astonishing statistics that most stars in our Galaxy are surrounded by planets. Understanding what makes a planet, when and where, which elements are abundant and which conditions prevail, means understanding its formation history.
The formation of planets and moons are intimately related, which means that moons can help us understand the origin of a planet. Moreover, most of the candidate places to look for life in our Solar System are in the giant planet's moons. Jupiter, for example, is not in the habitable zone but the moons of Jupiter, like Europa, are prime targets to study life.
Observational astronomy relies upon special techniques to study the cosmos. Here we investigate how we can apply new developments in informatics to improve our tools in astrophysics. YEMS scientific objectives involve detecting and characterizing young exoplanets and exomoons to answer the long-standing question of their formation and pave the way to explore alternative habitable places. These objectives can benefit from the latest advances in machine learning. We are developing tools that allow us to extract the most potential of our telescopes by applying AI to our processing methods.
Information about our multidisciplinary collaboration, our mission, and our philosophy as a science group.
The full list of publications produced by our researchers can be found in this link. Here we highlight a few works led by YEMS members at the forefront of research:
YEMS is involved in several projects on outreach, education, multicultural astronomy, and art.
Filling the gap between the frontiers of science and the classroom. Here you can find the work and resources produced by our team of experts in education, outreach and YEMS researchers (in Spanish).
YEMS is a multi-institutional center involving Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Universidad Diego Portales, Pontificie Universidad Católica de Chile, and Universidad de Concepción. YEMS is funded by ANID—Millennium Science Initiative Program Center Codes NCN2021_080 (2021-2024) and NCN2024_001 (2025-2027).
Image and HTML credits: Artist's impression of exomoon Kepler-1625b by ESA/Hubble. ALMA image of protoplanetary disk HD169142 by N. Lira - ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); S. Perez - USACH. Image of Europa by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute. We are thankful to html5up for the "Story" template.
