The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Jason Eastman

Center for Astrophysics

Senior Research Scientist

Jason Eastman

jason.eastman@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Jason Eastman is the PI of the MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA), a robotic array of four telescopes connected to a precision spectrograph to confirm exoplanet candidates. He is also the author of EXOFASTv2, a widely used public code to model exoplanetary systems. He works heavily with TESS transiting systems and is also involved with G-CLEF, the next generations PRV instrument for the GMT.

He/Him

PhD, The Ohio State University

Telescopes and Instruments

1.5-meter Tillinghast (60-inch) Telescope

The 1.5-Meter (60 Inch) Tillinghast Telescope is a general purpose visible-light telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona, operated by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Astronomers use this telescope to measure the spectrum of light emitted by a wide variety of objects in the Solar System, the Milky Way, and in distant galaxies.

CfA Operated (OIR) | Open to CfA Scientists | Active

Visit the 1.5 Meter (60 Inch) Tillinghast Telescope Website

Giant Magellan Telescope

Is Earth unique, or are there other planets with life in the Milky Way? To answer this question and many others, astronomers need larger and more sensitive observatories than anything we currently have. For that reason, the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is collaborating with a number of other institutions around the world to create the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), currently under construction in Chile. The GMT will consist of seven large mirrors acting in concert as one giant telescope 80 feet across. That large size provides an unprecedented view of the sky and the ability to detect the chemical composition of exoplanet atmospheres. Like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the GMT will be a powerful tool across the field of astronomy, providing insights into the formation of planets, the structure of galaxies, and the evolution of the universe itself.

Visit the GMT Website

1.2 Meter (48-inch) Telescope

The 1.2-Meter (48 Inch) Telescope is a general purpose visible-light telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO), a major observational facility of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian located in southern Arizona. Astronomers use this telescope to observe objects in the Solar System and the Milky Way, as well as other galaxies, including the supermassive black holes known as quasars. Astronomers also use the 1.2-Meter Telescope to observe star systems that might contain exoplanets, which is a major program for the observatory.

Visit the 1.2-Meter (48 Inch) Telescope Website

MEarth

How many Earth-sized planets are out there? How many of those might support life? Answering these questions is complicated because Earth-like worlds are small, making them hard to detect. The MEarth Project — pronounced “mirth” — simplifies the problem by looking for planets orbiting small, red M dwarf stars. Potentially habitable Earth-sized planets have smaller orbits around these stars than yellow Sun-like stars, allowing MEarth to identify them. The MEarth telescopes are operated by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and located at the CfA’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. Astronomers have used MEarth to identify multiple planets, including the rocky planet GJ1132b.

Visit the MEarth Website

MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA)

Finding potentially habitable exoplanets is a major goal of modern astronomy, but Earth-like worlds in Earth-like orbits are hard to detect. The MINiature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA) project is a set of small telescopes designed to look at two related but simpler systems: Earth-size planets close to their host stars, and “super-Earths” in more Earth-like orbits. MINERVA is a collaboration between the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the University of Montana, Penn State, the University of Southern Queensland, and the University of Pennsylvania. The telescopes are hosted at the CfA’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in Arizona.

Visit the MINERVA Website

Kepler/K2

Since the early 1990s, astronomers have identified thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Most of those identifications have come thanks to one observatory: NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Until it lost its ability to point, Kepler observed a region of the sky containing about 150,000 stars with potential planets, monitoring them for the slight decrease in light caused by planets crossing in front of the star. After the spacecraft’s pointing control failed, the mission was renamed K2, and it continued to hunt for exoplanets as it tumbled slowly, with its field of view drifting slowly across the sky. The mission finally ended in 2018, though the data it produced continues to provide astronomers with valuable information about planets in our galactic neighborhood. Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian were responsible for the preparation of the catalog for potentially interesting stars, and have participated extensively in follow-up observations of Kepler planetary discoveries.

Visit the Kepler/K2 Website

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Extrapolating from that knowledge, the Milky Way alone is probably home to hundreds of billions of planets, many of which are likely rocky, Earth-like worlds. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space observatory designed to look for exoplanets in orbit around 200,000 nearby bright stars, with a particular interest in identifying small planets. Astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian are part of the scientific team to analyze TESS data, as well as performing follow-up observations. The relative closeness of worlds in the TESS survey will allow astronomers to even study some of their atmospheres, using the future Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and other observatories. TESS observational program is complementary to NASA’s long-running Kepler/K2 mission, and could identify as many as 20,000 new exoplanet orbiting a wide variety of star types.

Visit the TESS Website

SPHEREx

Clues about the origin of the universe and of life are scattered across the sky. SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) is a NASA medium-class Explorer (MIDEx) designed to measure optical-to-infrared spectra of hundreds of millions of galaxies and millions of Milky Way stars. With its unprecedented galaxy catalog, SPHEREx will answer pressing questions about the history and origin of the universe. Its unique catalog of Milky Way stellar spectra will reveal the abundances of water and other molecules associated with life in the Milky Way in unprecedented detail. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, including Gary Melnick, Matthew Ashby, Joseph Hora, and Volker Tolls, are involved in the SPHEREx investigation in order to better characterize the distributions of these molecules throughout the Galaxy and better answer complex questions about their origins.SPHEREx launched successfully on March 11 and has been conducting the first of its four planned all-sky surveys since nominal operations began on May 1, 2025. Calibrated images are being publicly released soon after they are obtained, and are available at the link below. Visit the SPHEREx WebsiteVisit the Public SPHEREx Data Archive

Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network (HATNet)

The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope Network (HATNet) is a set of computer-controlled small telescopes located at various observatories around the world. Five of these telescopes are hosted at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO), a Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian facility in southern Arizona. HATNet is designed to look for planets in orbit around bright stars; since beginning operations in 2001, astronomers have used the network to identify 70 confirmed exoplanets and several hundred additional candidates that have not yet been confirmed as exoplanets or ruled out as false positives.

Visit the HATNet Website