A teenager discovered a new planet on the third day of his NASA internship

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/teenager-discovered-new-planet-third-day-his-nasa-internship/

Source:  By Lateshia Beachum, The Washington Post.

Excerpt: Most people sit through countless orientations on the first few days of their job, but one teen discovered a planet — on his third day. Wolf Cukier, 17, of Scarsdale, N.Y., had wrapped up his junior year of high school when he headed off to intern in the summer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where he discovered a planet orbiting two stars. The planet, now known as TOI 1338 b, is nearly seven times as large as Earth and has two stars — one that’s about 10 percent more massive than our sun and another only a third of the sun’s mass and less bright, according to NASA [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-tess-mission-uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars]. ...Cukier had a framework of what to look for based on his exploration of the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project [https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-eisner/planet-hunters-tess], which allows people to comb through TESS data and categorize star systems, he said....

Popular posts from this blog

Stellar remains of famed 1987 supernova found at last

Planets around dead stars offer glimpse of the Solar System’s future—after the Sun swallows us up

The Smallest Moon of Mars May Not Be What It Seemed