Hi, I'm Seán, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching bei München, Germany. My research explores mass loss from massive stars and the nature of interacting transients.
Research Focus I'm interested in the final stages of massive stellar evolution—investigating pre-supernova activity to better understand what happens in the weeks to months before core collapse. My broader research spans:
- High-energy astrophysical transients, especially interacting systems and their spectral signatures
- Multi-wavelength photometric analysis using instruments like MPI 2.2m/GROND
- X-ray studies with eROSITA and the Einstein Probe
- Developing tools and methods to detect early-time progenitor variability ahead of next-gen surveys like LSST
Open Science & Software Open-source development is a cornerstone of transparent and reproducible science. Many of the tools I build are designed to support transient discovery and photometric analysis workflows.
If you find any of the code featured in my publications useful for your work, feel free to reach out—collaboration and reuse are encouraged.
Get in Touch Got a question or want to collaborate? Reach me at sbrennan@mpe.mpg.de