Patrick Tamburo

Welcome! I am a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Charbonneau Astronomy Group at Harvard University. My current focus is using Harvard's Tierras Observatory to search for exoplanets around very low-mass stars, detect exomoons and exorings, and characterize stellar variability.

A key goal of astronomy is the atmospheric characterization of Earth-like exoplanets. However, at present, these measurements are only feasible for transiting rocky exoplanets around nearby very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. This fact inspired the work that I completed for my Ph.D. thesis on the Perkins INfrared Exosatellite Survey (PINES) and motivates my current work on Tierras. By searching for Earth-like planets around hosts that permit characterization efforts, I hope to contribute to answering one of humanity's longest-standing questions, one that could be answered in our lifetimes: are we alone?

Click here for the latest copy of my CV.

Tierras Observatory is a fully robotic 1.3-m telescope atop Mt. Hopkins, AZ. It is equipped with an ultra-precise photometer specifically designed to reduce systematic effects that impact time series observations of very low-mass stars. We are using Tierras to search for exoplanets around mid-to-late M dwarfs, search for exomoons and exorings, and characterize stellar variability. Visit the project website here.

As a graduate student, I designed and implemented the Perkins INfrared Satellite Survey (PINES) on Boston University's 1.8-m Perkins Telescope Observatory. PINES is an ongoing search for transiting planets and moons around L and T dwarfs, objects that span the boundary between the stellar and substellar regimes. Read the survey overview paper here.

1. García-Mejía, J., de Beurs, Z. L., Tamburo, P., et al., 2026. "A Ground-based Transit Observation of the Long-period Extremely Low-density Planet HIP 41378 f". The Astronomical Journal, 171, 245.


2. Yee, S. W., Tamburo, P., Stefánsson, G., et al., 2025. "The Polar Orbit of TOI-2374 b, a Planet in the Neptunian Ridge". The Astronomical Journal, 170, 275.


3. Tamburo, P., Yee, S. W., García-Mejía, J., et al., 2025. "Spot-crossing Variations Confirm a Misaligned Orbit for a Planet Transiting an M Dwarf". The Astronomical Journal, 170, 200.


4. Tamburo, P., Yee, S. W., García-Mejía, J., et al., 2025. "The True Stellar Obliquity of a Sub-Saturn Planet from the Tierras Observatory and the Keck Planet Finder". The Astronomical Journal, 170, 34.


5. Tamburo, P., Muirhead, P. S., and Dressing, C. D., 2023. "Predicting the Yield of Small Transiting Exoplanets around Mid-M and Ultracool Dwarfs in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey". The Astronomical Journal, 165, 251.


6. Tamburo, P., Withers, P., Dalba, P. A., Moore, L., and Koskinen, T., 2023. "Cassini Radio Occultation Observations of Saturn's Ionosphere: Electron Density Profiles From 2005 to 2013". Journal of Geophysical Research (Space Physics), 128, e2023JA031310.


7. Tamburo, P., Muirhead, P. S., McCarthy, A. M., et al., 2022. "The Perkins INfrared Exosatellite Survey (PINES). II. Transit Candidates and Implications for Planet Occurrence around L and T Dwarfs". The Astronomical Journal, 164, 252.


8. Tamburo, P., Muirhead, P. S., McCarthy, A. M., et al., 2022. "The Perkins INfrared Exosatellite Survey (PINES) I. Survey Overview, Reduction Pipeline, and Early Results". The Astronomical Journal, 163, 253.


9. Tamburo, P., Muirhead, P. S., Agol, E., Hart, M., and Thakar, B., 2021. "Confirmation of a Dynamical Model for the TRAPPIST-1 Exoplanetary System". Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, 5, 219.


10. Tamburo, P. and Muirhead, P. S., 2019. "Design Considerations for a Ground-based Search for Transiting Planets around L and T Dwarfs". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 131, 114401.


11. Dalba, P. A. and Tamburo, P., 2019. "Spitzer Detection of the Transiting Jupiter-analog Exoplanet Kepler-167e". The Astrophysical Journal, 873, L17.


12. Tamburo, P., Mandell, A., Deming, D., and Garhart, E., 2018. "Confirming Variability in the Secondary Eclipse Depth of the Super-Earth 55 Cancri e". The Astronomical Journal, 155, 221.




A full listing of my 18 refereed publications is available on SAO/NASA ADS.

Email: patrick.tamburo@cfa.harvard.edu
Address: 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138
Bluesky: @tamburo.bsky.social