Dr. William Thompson

Herzberg Instrument Science Fellow at the National Research Council of Canada, working on exoplanet observations, instrumentation, and data reduction tools.

William dot Thompson at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
wthompson at uvic.ca

ORCID: 0000-0001-5684-4593

GitHub Google Scholar BlueSky Social Twitter AstroBin

My research interests include observational direct imaging projects, novel data post-processing (SNAP), and analysis (eg. orbit modelling), and the development of new instruments and capabilities. Recently, these include focal plane wavefront sensing with the self-coherent camera, and imaging spectroscopy. I also contribute to the JuliaAstro package ecosystem.

Image 1 Dark hole at NEW-EARTH Lab
Image 2 Image of HR8799 Planets
Image 2 Orbit modelling of 51 Eridani b

Posts & Tutorials

▷ Direct Imaging Sample Data ▷ Deorbitting sandbox ▷ Orbit movies ▷ Official JuliaAstro tutorial series ▷ Fitting planet astrometry ▷ Orbit calculations ▷ Julia notes for astronomy ▷ Noise propagation in Fourier transform Spectrographs

Code

AstroImages.jl Octofitter.jl SNAP PlanetOrbits.jl PairPlots.jl Aeron.jl Red-Pitaya Multi-Channel Analyser UI

Recorded Talks

AstroImages.jl (JuliaCon 2022) Julia for Adaptive Optics (JuliaCon 2022) Adaptive Optics in Julia (JuliaCon 2021) Performance of the FAST self coherent camera (SPIE 2022,paywalled)

Publications

Thesis

Lights in Motion: Observing Nearby Planets with Imaging, Wavefront Sensing, Orbital Detection, and Spectroscopy

First author

▷ Thompson, W., Lawrence, J., Blakely, D., et al, Octofitter: Fast, Flexible, and Accurate Orbit Modeling to Detect Exoplanets, AJ, 2023 ▷ Thompson, W., Marois, C., et al, Deep orbital search for additional planets in the HR8799 system, AJ, 2023 ▷ Thompson, W., Marois, C., Singh, G., et al, Performance of the Fast Atmospheric Self Coherent camera at the NEW-EARTH lab and a simplified measurement algorithm, SPIE, 2022 ▷ Thompson, W., Marois, C., Improved Contrast in Images of Exoplanets using Direct SNR Optimization, AJ, 2021 ▷ Thompson, W., Marois, C., Extremely Bright Orbital Guide Beacons for Extremely Large Telescopes, AO4ELT6, 2019

Pre-prints

▷ Thompson, W., Herwig, F., et al, 3D hydrodynamic simulations of massive main-sequence stars II. Convective excitation and spectra of internal gravity waves, submitted to MNRAS, 2023 ▷ Thompson, W., Giordano, M., AstroImages.jl, submitted to JCON, 2022

Selected Co-authored

▷ Li, D., Thompson, W., Savransky, D., Marois, C. Focal plane wavefront control for the Gemini Planet Imager 2.0 calibration system (CAL2) ▷ Marois, C., Lardiére, O., Thompson, W., et al, Deployment of focal plane WFS technologies on 8-m telescopes: from the Subaru SPIDERS pathfinder, to the facility-class GPI 2.0 CAL2 system, SPIE, 2022 ▷ Lardiére, O., Marois, C., Thompson, W., et al, Optical design of SPIDERS, a Subaru Pathfinder Instrument for Detecting Exoplanets & Retrieving Spectra, SPIE, 2022 ▷ Singh, G., Thompson, W., et al, Pupil-plane LLOWFS simulation and laboratory results from NEW-EARTH’s high-contrast imaging testbed, SPIE, 2022 ▷ Johnson, A. B., Marois, C., Gamroth, D., Fitzsimmons, J, Lardiére, O., Thompson, W., et al, Blinking the fringes, initial development and results of the Ultra-Low Speed Optical Chopper for the Self-Coherent Camera, SPIE, 2022 ▷ Lardière, O., Gerard, B., Marois, C., Thompson, W., et al Optical design and preliminary results of NEW EARTH, first Canadian high-contrast imaging laboratory test bench Proceedings of the SPIE, 2020 ▷ Marois, C., Gerard, B., Thompson, W., et al Exoplanet Imaging: a technological and scientific road-map for finding Life signatures on other Worlds, Canadian Long Range Plan For Astronomy and Astrophysics White Paper, 2020