A Jekyll-based educational site explaining the mathematics behind ellipses, and how astronomers use transits and occultations to study exoplanets — built for visual learners, by a visual learner.
Live site: bailey4770.github.io/ellipses
This site covers the geometry and maths underpinning how we detect and characterise exoplanets using:
- Ellipses — the orbital shapes described by Kepler's first law
- Transits — when a planet passes in front of its host star
- Occultations — when a planet passes behind its host star
Concepts are explained with interactive Plotly visualisations generated from
Python scripts in src/, and embedded into Jekyll blog posts.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Site framework | Jekyll + Minimal Mistakes |
| Hosting | GitHub Pages |
| Visualisations | Python · Plotly · NumPy |
| Package management | uv |
Bailey Stringer · GitHub