Dr. Alexandre Gallenne

Dr. Alexandre Gallenne received his PhD from University of Paris IV in 2011, France. His thesis work entitled "Cepheids at high angular resolution: circumstellar envelope and pulsation" focused on applying high angular resolution techniques to pulsating stars.

His work is dedicated to stellar astrophysics using innovating techniques such as multi-telescope long-baseline interferometry and adaptive optics imaging. They are mainly focused on the distance scale and the use of Cepheids, but not only. They also include the study of binary systems, circumstellar environment of evolved stars, fundamental stellar properties and exoplanets.

He is a member of the Araucaria Project (webpage) since 2012, whose goal is to improve a variety of methods for distance measurement, particularly Cepheids. His expertise on long-baseline interferometry is fundamental in the project, which enabled, for instance, the determination of the LMC distance at a 1% level in 2019. His main part in the project is related to the calibration of the surface brightness-color relation and independent distance measurements using astrometric binary stars.

Research interests

1. Stellar physics: Cepheids, binary stars, intrinsic stellar parameters, circumstellar envelopes, distance scale, exoplanets, evolved stars
2. Observational techniques: Optical Long-baseline interferometry, adaptive optics imaging, lucky imaging, aperture masking

• email: alexandre (point) gallenne (at) gmail (point) com