Keele University | 2015 Jun 10
[img3="An artist's impression of Tom's planet, WASP-142b, orbiting its star, WASP-142. The planet is depicted as seen from a hypothetical moon. A second, dimmer star is seen in the background. Being 1000 light years away, the planet is too distant to obtain a direct image. (Credit: David A. Hardy)"]https://waspplanets.files.wordpress.com ... 142_lo.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]A 15-yr-old schoolboy has discovered a new planet orbiting a star 1000 light years away in our galaxy. Tom Wagg was doing work-experience at Keele University when he spotted the planet by finding a tiny dip in the light of a star as a planet passed in front of it.
"I'm hugely excited to have a found a new planet, and I'm very impressed that we can find them so far away'", says Tom, now aged 17. It has taken two years of further observations to prove that Tom's discovery really is a planet.
Tom found the planet by looking at data collected by the WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project, which surveys the night skies monitoring millions of stars to look for the tell-tale tiny dips (transits) caused by planets passing in front of their host star.
Tom's planet has been given the catalogue number WASP-142b, being the 142nd discovery by the WASP collaboration. It is in the Southern constellation of Hydra. While astronomers worldwide have now found over 1000 extra-solar planets, Tom is possibly the youngest ever to have done so. ...
