Postdoctoral position: "Search and characterisation of co-orbital bodies to TNOs" - CRAL (UMR5574) et LGL-TPE (UMR5276)

Research project

The objective of our this project is the study of TNOs which are tracers of the formation and evolution of planetary systems: they have a privileged link with planetary migration, and the origins of pre-biotic materials on Earth, and their dispersion in the solar system. Finally, the study of TNOs will bring direct constraints on the gaseous composition of protoplanetary disks, which will be studied in parallel in our team. The post-doctoral position is dedicated to research on small body populations focused particularly on applying (and developing) advanced data processing tools to access the faint signals from TNO satellites. The postdoc position aims to 1- revisit these observations and all existing archival SPHERE TNO data (about a dozen objects) by using new data analysis techniques developed by our team, 2- apply the new data analysis techniques to JWST Data 3- detect, characterize and fit the orbit of TNO satellites and surrounding material like rings, 4- estimate the mass of the systems, 5- use publicly available sizes from Spitzer and Herschel programs to derive the density of the TNOs primaries themselves, which is critical to constrain the formation and the evolution of these systems.