Étienne Artigau

Étienne Artigau

Astrophysicist

Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) · Université de Montréal

I am an astrophysicist at Université de Montréal, member of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx). My research focuses on brown dwarfs, exoplanets, and astronomical instrumentation.

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Research

I work on the detection and characterization of exoplanets and brown dwarfs in the solar
neighborhood. I am the scientific lead for the NIRPS
infrared spectrograph (installed at ESO's 3.6m telescope in Chile) and
SPIRou (at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope).

I have developed innovative high-precision velocimetry techniques that enable the detection
of Earth-mass planets around low-mass stars. More recently, I developed a method to measure
stellar temperature variations with unprecedented precision.

I am also involved in supporting the analysis algorithms for the
NIRISS instrument aboard the James Webb
Space Telescope, and in future algorithms for ANDES
on the ELT.

Recent work includes:

  • Ultra-precise measurement of stellar temperature variations (<1 Kelvin over months)

(publication)

  • Development of the Line-By-Line code for meter-per-second infrared radial velocities

(LBL project)

All this work is possible thanks to the iREx team. Visit the
institute page and subscribe to our
newsletter.

Tools

Astronomy

Keplerian and Transit Guestimator

Tool to determine exoplanet properties from radial velocity monitoring parameters and predict transits.

Astronomy

Modal Noise Simulator

Generates synthetic modal-noise spectra for fibre-fed spectrographs using a Gaussian Process model with wavelength-dependent amplitude.

Astronomy

S1drama

Interactive app to explore and visualize dynamic astronomy-related scenarios.

Astronomy

Stability 3 Bodies

Tool that computes the stability of a three-body system against Kozai-Lidov (KL) oscillations.

Astronomy

Star Visibility Planner

Tool to determine star visibility and plan observations of telluric calibration stars.

Astronomy

STAR-O-METER

Retrieves physical and kinematic properties of main-sequence stars from their identifier, querying Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and AllWISE catalogs.

Astronomy

VROOMM ETC

Exposure time calculator to estimate observing performance and plan data acquisition.

Birds

Bird Pictures Folder

Compilation of my bird pictures.

Finance

ETF Comparator

Interactive comparator for ~700 Canadian ETFs (TSX). Sort and filter by growth, volatility, sector allocation, and a quality score relative to the S&P 500.

Finance

Growthorama

Browser-based financial planning tool that projects retirement portfolio growth and compares scenarios with and without management fees.

LaTeX

latex_updates

Generates A&A-style tracked-changes PDFs between two LaTeX manuscripts. New text in blue, removed text in orange with strikethrough. Installs via pip, runs from anywhere.

Media & Publications

📚 View my publications on NASA ADS

Bird Photography

Outside of work, I am a passionate amateur birder. Since 1989, I have documented
over 47,000 bird observations around the world, along with thousands of photographs.

My photo gallery presents a selection of my best images, organized by species,
taxonomic family, and trip.