About Me

Hello! I'm Kate, an Astrophysics PhD student at Queen's University Belfast. I work on the mitigation of stellar activitiy which you can read more about here.

Research

I study how magnetic activity on the Sun and other stars affects their spectra and complicates the search for exoplanets. Magnetic regions such as plages distort spectral lines, introducing noise that can mimic or hide planetary signals in radial velocity measurements. To address this, I use Spectral Differencing Analysis (SDA), a technique that compares high- and low-activity spectra to isolate activity-driven changes. This allows me to identify which spectral lines are most sensitive to stellar activity and develop new activity indicators. My work combines HARPS-N Sun-as-a-star observations with synthetic spectra to track variability across the solar rotation and magnetic cycles. By comparing our predictions of plage coverage with direct solar images from SDO, I test how well spectral indicators trace surface activity. This approach not only improves our understanding of the Sun, but also provides tools for disentangling stellar activity from true planetary signals in other stars.

Publications

Coming soon!

Contact

Email: khobbs01(at)qub.ac.uk
Address: Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN