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About Me
Hello! I am Rae Holcomb, an observational exoplanet and stellar astronomer. My research interests include rotating stars, exoplanet discovery via the radial velocity and transit methods, stellar activity, and photometric data reduction pipelines. As of Fall 2025, I am a postdoc (NPP) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where I work on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Pandora SmallSat Mission. I completed my Ph. D. at the University of California Irvine in 2025.
You can download my full CV here: Rae_Holcomb_CV.pdf (Sept 2025)
Check out our 2024 April Fools paper: Catsteroseismology: Survey-based Analysis of Purr-mode Oscillations Suggests Inner Lives of Cats are Unknowable
My Research
Observing Exoplanets
The radial velocity (RV) method lets us find distant planets by looking for tiny shifts in the a star's spectrum, which are caused by the gravitation influence of the planet as it orbits the star. As a member of the TESS-Keck Survey and the HPF Collaboration, I use high-precision spectrographs at Keck Observatory, HET, and Kitt Peak to discover and measure masses of exoplanets.
Read about some of the planets we've found:
LHS 3154b: A planet too big for its tiny star
Also featured in Science Magazine!
Stellar Rotation
How fast a star rotates can tell you a lot about it, from how old it is to how active it might be. I developed SpinSpotter (paper, code), an open source tool to measure stellar rotation periods of stars in large photometric surveys. SpinSpotter is fast, flexible, and designed to be easy to adapt for a variety of science cases.
Usning SpinSpotter, I have published a catalog of stellar rotation periods using data from the prime mission of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.
This catalog will be uploaded to Vizier soon, but for now you can access it as a CSV file here: SpinSpotter Rotation Catalog.
M Dwarfs & Stellar Activity
M dwarfs are the smallest, coolest, and most numerous stars in our local galaxy. This makes them especially interesting as explanet hosts. But there's a problem--they also tend to be very noisy! M dwarfs can be covered in enormous sunspots, have near-constant stellar flares, and in some cases can rotate many times faste than the sun. I study how the brightness fluctuations over time tells us about what activity is present on these stars, and how it can inform our efforts to find planets that orbit them using the radial velocity method.
Read more about the Habitable-zone Planet Finder!
The Pandora Mission
Pandora is a SmallSat mission designed to study exoplanet atmospheres using transmission spectroscopy. Launching in 2025, it will take simultaneous observations of planets transiting their stars in both the visible and UV ranges, allowing us to learn more both about the planets' atmosphere and the surface of the stars they orbit.
As a member of the Data Pipeline Team, my job is to develop robust, open source software that will be used during spacecraft commissioning in 2024 and to produce well-calibrated spectra and other data products that will be made public to the astrophysics community after launch in 2025.
Read more about Pandora: Mission Overview paper, Stellar Corrections paper
Education and Outreach
Code/Astro: Code/Astro is an annual week-long astronomy software development workshop which aims to teach fundamental software skills for astronomers at all career levels. As computer science and open-source software become increasingly essential to the daily work of an astronomer, we believe in offering a free and fun opportunity to develop a solid foundation in these skills. I have served as a TA for Code/Astro since 2023 and a Head TA since 2025. In this role, I have introduced the "Local Hub" model, a hybrid attendance mode which allows participants to benefit from in-person group work and activities at their home university while also reducing the need for long distance travel.
Outreach Talks:I enjoy giving talks to local schools and community groups about my research and astronomy in general. Some of the venues I have spoken at include the Bad Ad Hoc Hypothesis Festival (BAHFest Houston 2018), Tech Trek Science Camp, and Astronomy On Tap DC. If you are interested in having me speak at your event, please reach out!
Resources
Here is a collection of links to resources I have found useful across my career.Paper Writing
David Math Logic - Coloring for Colorbindliness - tool for picking color-blind friendly palettes for graphs and plots.