Building OpenExo
A Personal Research Initiative by Abhinav Kandregula
The Origin
I started OpenExo because I was tired of seeing space science treated as a collection of pretty pictures and "fun facts." When I began my first independent research project, I realized that the real magic isn't in the artist's rendering of a planet—it’s in the messy, granular data of a light curve. I wanted to build a platform that treated other students with that same respect.
I believe that if you give a student a raw CSV file from a NASA mission, you aren't just teaching them astronomy; you're teaching them how to think through noise. My goal with OpenExo is to move beyond the "textbook" and into the actual workflow of a researcher.
My Methodology
My work is centered on Transit Photometry. I spend a lot of time looking at the relationship between a planet’s size and its host star. In the courses I designed, I teach the same math I use in my own analysis to determine planetary radii:
Through OpenExo, I’ve built a pipeline that guides users from raw data acquisition via the NASA Exoplanet Archive to signal processing. We don't just find "dips" in starlight; we analyze signal-to-noise ratios and hunt for false positives like eclipsing binaries—the exact hurdles I face in my own research.
Why This Matters to Me
To me, astrophysics is the ultimate exercise in evidence-based reasoning. Whether I'm parsing Kepler data or trying to understand stellar variability, I'm practicing a form of "data literacy" that I believe is essential for our generation.
OpenExo is my way of sharing that process. It is a continuation of my own curiosity and an invitation for others to join me in the hunt for new worlds.