(Newswire.net — January 17, 2020) — A Teenager found a new planet on the third day of his internship in Nasa, media reports.
While checking photos of the super-powered satellite seventeen-year-old high school graduate Wolf Cukier noticed something out of the ordinary. It turned out to be a new planet, 1,300 light years from Earth.
After graduating from school last summer, Cukier received a two-month internship at NASA’s Godard Space Flight Center. His job was to check the information sent by the Transit Exoplanet Exploration Satellite (TESS) – a space telescope that searches for planets beyond our solar system.
To discover such a planet, Cukier sought changes in the brightness of the stars, and noticed a shadow that would potentially mean that a planet was passing nearby.
“About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet,” CBS News quoted Cukier.
Then other scientists got involved and confirmed his findings.
Detailed checks revealed that the planet was 6.9 times larger than Earth. The new planet is named TOI 1338b.
Not a very easy-to-remember name, said Cukier who had no influence on the naming process.
The TOI 1338b is not an ordinary planet – it is orbiting two stars. Star Wars fans immediately remember Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home world.
“I really like Tatooine, at least the way the stars look in the sky. That means a double sunset would be possible,” says Cukier.
However, unlike Tatooine, this planet is not habitable. Wolf explains that it is probably extremely warm on it and that the planet probably does not have a solid surface.
Otherwise, does the scientific breakthrough mean that one day he is guaranteed a job in NASA?
“I don’t know anything about NASA hiring people, but it certainly won’t hurt,” Cukier says. According to NASA, they told him they were “impressed” by what he had achieved.
NASA scientists are surprised by the media attention this case sparked. It is scientifically important but not that uncommon in NASA whose deep space researchers discovered hundreds of planets.
NASA has also announced that TESS had discovered TOI 700 d, an Earth-sized world within the habitable range of its star, which could allow the presence of liquid water, “only” 100 light years away.