Matthew Penny

 

Research Interests

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Exoplanet demographics: gravitational microlensing and transit surveys, wide-field and time-domain surveys, Milky Way structure

I work on understanding the number and properties of exoplanetary systems (exoplanet demographics), by designing and conducting large-scale surveys using the gravitational microlensing and transit techniques. I’m particularly interested in understanding how the location of a star in our Galaxy and its chemical composition effect the planetary system it forms.

I work with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, ESA’s Euclid Space Telescope and others in space, and the Blanco 4-meter telescope and its wide-field camera DECam and others on the ground. I am the principal investigator of the MISHAPS survey, searching for transiting hot Jupiters in the Galactic bulge, and globular clusters. I am an active member of the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey Project Infrastructure Team and Euclid Exoplanets Working Group. I built the gulls exoplanet microlensing simulation code, and led development of the SynthPop Galactic Population Synthesis code. 

 

Selected Publications

• Crisp, Alison L.; Klüter, Jonas; Newman, Marz L.; Penny, Matthew T.; Beatty, Thomas G.; Cleeves, L. Ilsedore; Collins, Karen A.; Johnson, Jennifer A.; Johnson, Marshall C.; Lund, Michael B.; Martínez-Vázquez, Clara E.; Ness, Melissa K.; Rodriguez, Joseph E.; Siverd, Robert; Stevens, Daniel J.; Villanueva, Steven; Ziegler, Carl “The Multiband Imaging Survey for High-alpha PlanetS (MISHAPS). I. Preliminary Constraints on the Occurrence Rate of Hot Jupiters in 47 Tucanae” 2025, The Astronomical Journal, 170, 104

• Klüter, Jonas; Huston, Macy J.; Aronica, Abigail ; Johnson, Samson A.; Penny, Matthew T.; Newman, Marz; Zohrabi, Farzaneh; Crisp, Alison L.; Chevis, Allison “SynthPop: A New Framework for Synthetic Milky Way Population Generation” The Astronomical Journal, 169, 317

• Johnson, Samson A.; Penny, Matthew; Gaudi, B. Scott; Kerins, Eamonn; Rattenbury, Nicholas J.; Robin, Annie C.; Calchi Novati, Sebastiano; Henderson, Calen B. “Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. II. Free-floating Planet Detection Rates” The Astronomical Journal, 160, 123

• Penny, Matthew T.; Gaudi, B. Scott; Kerins, Eamonn; Rattenbury, Nicholas J.; Mao, Shude; Robin, Annie C.; Calchi Novati, Sebastiano “Predictions of the WFIRST Microlensing Survey. I. Bound Planet Detection Rates” 2019, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 241, 34

• Penny, Matthew T.; Henderson, Calen B.; Clanton, Christian “Is the Galactic Bulge Devoid of Planets?” 2016, The Astrophysical Journal, 830, 150

• Sumi, T.; Penny, M. T. ”Possible Solution of the Long-standing Discrepancy in the Microlensing Optical Depth toward the Galactic Bulge by Correcting the Stellar Number Count” The Astrophysical Journal, 827, 139

• Penny, M. T.; Kerins, E.; Rattenbury, N.; Beaulieu, J. -P.; Robin, A. C.; Mao, S.; Batista, V.; Calchi Novati, S.; Cassan, A.; Fouqué, P.; McDonald, I.; Marquette, J. B.; Tisserand, P.; Zapatero Osorio, M. R. “ExELS: an exoplanet legacy science proposal for the ESA Euclid mission - I. Cold exoplanets” 2013, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 434, 2