Daily US Times, Washington: A NASA intern aged 17 discovered a new planet on just third day of work. The newly discovered planet is 1,300 light-years away from Earth.
Wolf Cukier had to study how two stars cross paths when creating an eclipse as his assignment. In part of his study, while Cukier focused on a solar system called TOI 1338 with the help of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess). He noticed something blocking the light.
His noticed thing was an unknown planet, later revealed.
NASA issued a press release revealing the achievement.
Cukier said, “I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit.”
A signal from a system called TOI 1338 caught his attention, but he thought it was a stellar eclipse.
”It turned out to be a planet.”
NASA verified Cukier’s observations for several weeks then reached its decision that the planet was only the 13th planet of its kind to be discovered and was 6.9 times larger than Earth.
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