About Me

Hi! I am an astronomer and Veni fellow at the Leiden Observatory of the Leiden University. I work on direct observations and atmospheric characterization of exoplanets. Before, I was an ETH fellow at ETH Zurich and PhD student at the University of Amsterdam.

Contact

Einsteinweg 55, 2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands

Office: BW.4.06 (Gorlaeus Building)

Email: stolker@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Languages: Dutch, English

Pronouns: he/him

Research Interest

My research involves direct observations of exoplanets, using a combination of high-contrast imaging, spectroscopy, and interferometric techniques. I investigate the atmospheric characteristics of young and self-luminous planets, including their chemical composition, temperature structure, and clouds. In am in particular interested to determine how, where, and when giant planets form at large distances from their star, and to unravel formation signatures from observations of their atmospheres.

Have a look at ADS or arXiv for a complete overview of publications, and Github for developed software packages.

Software

• species: Toolkit for atmospheric characterization of directly imaged exoplanets.

• calistar: Tool for finding a calibration star.

• pycrires: Data reduction pipeline / wrapper for high-resolution spectroscopy data obtained with CRIRES+ at the VLT.

• PynPoint: Pipeline for processing and analysis of high-contrast imaging data.

• ARTES: A 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code specifically designed for (polarized) scattered light simulations of planetary atmospheres (reflected and thermal light).

• diskmap: A tool for scattered light mapping of protoplanetary disks, including 3D deprojection and extraction of phase functions.