You found my website! Welcome. My name is Thomas Winterhalder, I'm an astrophysics PhD student at the European Southern Observatory in Garching. I'm from the South-West corner of Germany but have lived in many different places throughout my life. After graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Freiburg and a Master's degree in Physics from University of Heidelberg, I have started my PhD in Astrophysics in Sept. 2022.

My research focusses on the direct detection and characterisation of exoplanets and brown dwarfs. Currently I am investigating methods that help to efficiently expand the sample size of imaged planets, an essential step in establishing population-level trends describing their atmospheres, demographics as well as formation and evolution processes. To this end I am mostly using data from ESA's Gaia mission and the GRAVITY instrument at ESO's VLTI in Chile. In the past, I've also dabbled in some Solar System science. If you want to get a more detailed idea of what I work on you should head to the Research page of this website.

Apart from actively pursuing several research projects, I take great joy in communicating the awe and wonder of astronomy and astrophysics to the general public. See the Outreach page for more on this.

Finally, feel free to explore the random things I have stuffed into the Miscellaneous section of this page. Don't get lost!