Pietro Leonardi 🍕
Pietro Leonardi

Postdoc

UniversitĂ  di Padova

Welcome!

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.

My CV can be downloaded here!
Interests
  • Exoplanetary Systems
  • Transit Timing Variations (TTVs)
  • Radial Velocities (RVs)
  • Secular Timing effects
Education
  • 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

📚 + 🔭: My Research
Exoplanet research has reshaped our understanding of planetary systems, uncovering a vast diversity in their architectures and evolution. My work centers on the synergy between Radial Velocities (RVs) and Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) to investigate planetary dynamics, mass distributions, and formation pathways.

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.

First-author Publications
(2025). Transit timing variations in HIP 41378: CHEOPS and TESS confirm a non-transiting sixth planet in the system. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 702, A211 (2025).
(2024). TASTE V. A new ground-based investigation of orbital decay in the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-12b . Astronomy & Astrophysics, 686, A84 (2024).
Co-author Publications
(2025). A joint effort to discover and characterize two resonant mini-Neptunes around TOI-1803 with TESS, HARPS-N, and CHEOPS. Astronomy & Astrophysiscs, A&A, 695, A273 (2025).
(2024). Hints of a close outer companion to the ultra-hot Jupiter TOI-2109 b. Astronomy & Astrophysiscs, A&A, 692, A254 (2024).
(2024). Architecture of TOI-561 planetary system. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 535, 3, 2024.
(2024). The K2-24 planetary system revisited by CHEOPS. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 690, A349, 2024.
(2023). Characterizing a world within the hot-neptune desert: Transit observations of LTT 9779 b with the Hubble space telescope/WFC3. The Astronomical Journal, 166 (4), 158, 2021.
Recent Talks Presentations

Education

  1. PhD in Space Science and Technology

    Università di Padova - Universitò di Trento

    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.

  2. MSc in Astrophysics and Cosmology

    UniversitĂ  di Padova
    Thesis on Ground-based follow-up of WASP-12b
  3. BSc in Astronomy

    UniversitĂ  di Bologna