Vera C. Rubin Assistant Professor Meredith MacGregor recently co-authored research that was published by Astronomy & Astrophysics that utilizes irregularities in the shape and brightness of debris discs to aid the search for new planets.

“Exoplanets in the outer regions of a system are sitting in what has been a blacked-out box, so to speak,” said MacGregor. “Studying debris disc structure is like shining a flashlight and looking at a shadow cast on the wall—we can’t say for certain what the exact properties of the object are, but we can get some idea of what it might be.”