Sebastian Zieba

Postdoctoral researcher (NASA Sagan Fellow) at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (Cambridge, USA)

In September 2024, I joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at the CfA as a NASA Sagan Fellow to characterize the surfaces and atmospheres of rocky exoplanets using JWST.

My research focuses on the characterization of exoplanets with space telescopes such as Spitzer, Hubble, JWST, and TESS. My work includes studies of rocky exoplanet atmospheres and surfaces, as well as the detection of exocomets.

Some of my previous work includes:

• Characterizing the surface of the hot rocky exoplanet LHS 3844 b
• Non-detection of a thick CO₂ atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1 c
• PACMAN: a pipeline to reduce and analyze Hubble WFC3 data
• Analysis of the lava planet K2-141 b
• Detection of exocomets around β Pictoris with TESS

Contact

email:
sebastian.zieba (at) cfa.harvard.edu

address:
Sebastian Zieba
Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian
60 Garden Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

office:
B-222

About me

I grew up in Salzburg, Austria. After finishing high school, I moved to Innsbruck to study physics and astrophysics. Between 2020 and 2024, I lived in Heidelberg, Germany, where I was a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in the Atmospheric Physics of Exoplanets (APEx) department. I now work in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a NASA Sagan Fellow.

(last revised May 6th, 2026)