Research, Teaching, and Outreach

At the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research I work as a Team Lead for Research & Development in the PLATO mission of ESA. I coordinate the development of the Data Analysis Support Tools and the generation of the PLATO Input Catalogs. My expertise as an astrophysicist is in the detection, formation, and habitability of extrasolar planets and moons. In my research time, I search for extrasolar planets in large data sets like NASA's Kepler and TESS space missions, in which we discovered dozens of Earth-sized planets. I am an Elected Member of the Organizing Committee of the International Astronomical Union Commission F2 "Exoplanets and the Solar System". These are some of my publication highlights:

• Large exomoons unlikely around Kepler-1625 b and Kepler-1708 b: Heller & Hippke (2024, Nature Astronomy)
• Discovery of some of the smallest transiting planets known at the time (17 Earth-sized planets from NASA's K2 space mission): Heller et al. (2019, A&A)
• Superhabitable Worlds: Heller & Armstrong (2014, Astrobiology)

At the University of Göttingen I supervise students at the bachelor, master, and PhD levels and I give lectures in astrophysics such as the "Astronomie für Studierende aller Fakultäten" (details: UniVZ, registration: StudIP, awarded with the Robert-Wichard-Pohl Medal in 2022). My podcast "Astronomie & Astrophysik" is available on iTunes.

News

2025/Apr/21: Research paper published about "The PLATO Mission" (Rauer et al. 2025, Experimental Astronomy)

2024/Dec/17: Public talk in the seminar series "Faszinierendes Weltall" for the Förderkreis Planetarium Göttingen: Eine Reise zu den Monden des Sonnensystems

2024/Oct/10: Talk at the PLATO Week 15 about the Data Analysis Support Tools (DAST) for the PLATO Mission of ESA

2024/Sep/10: Conference talk "The formation of the Galilean moons in the Grand Tack scenario" at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Cologne

2024/Sep/05: Research paper published: Exocomet orbital distribution around β Pictoris (Heller 2024, Astronomy & Astrophysics)

2024/Aug/22: Interview with Welt der Physik about the PLATO Mission of ESA and the search for Earth-like planets around bright Sun-like stars

PD Dr. René Heller Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3 37077 Göttingen Germany phone: (0049) 551 - 384 979 252 e-mail: heller[AT]mps.mpg.de twitter: @DrReneHeller

last update: 23 May 2025