I’m Pietro Leonardi, an Astrophysics postdoctoral fellow at the University of Padua. My research focuses on studying exoplanets, particularly on the synergy between Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) and extreme precision Radial Velocities (RVs) to investigate the architectures and dynamical evolution of planetary systems.
PhD in Space Science and Technology
Università di Padova - Universitò di Trento
MSc in Astrophysics and Cosmology
UniversitĂ di Padova
BSc in Astronomy
UniversitĂ di Bologna
I’ve studied tidal orbital decay in close-in planets, explored methods for detecting exomoons, and performed joint RV+TTV analyses to constrain the orbital configurations of multi-planet systems. To address the challenges of observing young stars, I also apply advanced stellar activity mitigation techniques to extract planetary signals from noisy RV datasets.
As a collaborator of the CHEOPS science team, I am currently working on the characterization of resonant multi-planet systems and the study of dynamical phenomena such as apsidal precession in eccentric hot Jupiters to probe their internal structure and tidal dissipation properties (OrbitalWALTZ program, PI: Leonardi, 190 orbits, PR150089).
In parallel, within the GAPS collaboration, I focus on characterizing long-period sub-Neptunes, prime targets for atmospheric studies, and on measuring the masses of planets around young stars, combining photometric follow-up with extreme-precision HARPS-N RV campaigns to understand their composition and early evolution.
Thesis title: Characterization of exoplanetary systems through transit timing techniques and Radial velocities: from secular perturbations to resonant chains
Supervised by Prof. Giampaolo Piotto, Dr. Luca Borsato and Dr. Valerio Nascimbeni.