A NASA Intern Finds A New Unique Planet Using TESS Data

A teen from New York has recently found a rare planet last summer. A 17-year-old boy named Wolf Cukier who is working with at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt found a one-of-a-kind star while going through a (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission) TESS data of star. The teenager was actually on a mission to look for a foreign system located 1,300 light-years from Earth. But, he finds himself to be lucky enough to find the dark body in one of the systems. Further studying proved that the darkness is nothing but a planet that is 6.9 times larger than Earth and it was found to be orbiting two stars. The scientists have dubbed the new celestial body as circumbinary planet.

The extremities in the binaries were found to be the highest when it came to this newly detected planet. After weeks of study, Cukier confirmed his hypothesis with the help of other scientists. NASA has also found the circumbinary planets’ discovery to be unique and difficult to find. These planets can be detected only during certain transit events wherein the suns show a decrease in their brightness. Two suns were found to play an important role as one, TOI 1338, varied in size that is it was 10% larger compared to our Sun and the other was 30% that of our Sun’s mass. Both the suns were found to orbit each other every 15 Days and thus, during the transit events it is difficult to identify the planet, TOI 1338-b.

The teen is trying to collect more evidence and prove his hypothesis right. Cukier’s discovery and his further research with the NASA scientists proved that the TESS program could successfully help discover a planet in orbit of two stars for the first time. The researchers are planning to publish their work at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu. The teenager plans to continue research into astronomy and eclipsing binaries in the future. NASA researchers and teenagers like Cukier are all working hard to find more planets in the future and increase their sample size of binary system planets.