Wolf Cukier, a 17-year-old boy, discovered a new planet, NASA announced , using his TESS ( Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ) satellite .
Cukier, a NASA fellow, had the task of examining the “variations in the brightness of the stars” in the images captured by TESS, so the young man realized what his eyes were facing.
“I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had marked as an eclipsing binary, a system in which two stars rotate in a circle and from our point of view are eclipsed in each orbit. About three days after starting my journey at the agency, 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, ”Cukier said in a statement.
TOI 1338 is approximately 6.9 times larger than Earth, it is explained, and due to its position, it often has solar eclipses.
“TESS is expected to observe hundreds of thousands of eclipsing binaries during its initial two-year mission, so many more of these circumbinary planets should be waiting to be discovered,” NASA added in its statement.
Not bad for only three days working.