'There's something here': teen discovers new planet while interning at Nasa

Wolf Cukier, 17, discovered a planet 6.9 times larger than Earth and only the 13th of its kind

Edward Helmore in New York
Fri 10 Jan 2020 11.56 ESTLast modified on Fri 10 Jan 2020 16.25 EST

A teenage intern on his third day helping out at a Nasa program to find worlds beyond our solar system has discovered a previously unknown planet with two stars 1,300 light years from Earth away in the constellation Pictor, the agency has announced.

Wolf Cukier, 17, from Scarsdale, New York, made the discovery while peering through the agency’s orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess) last year.

Assigned to study how two stars would cross paths creating an eclipse, he focused on the solar system TOI 1338, where he noticed something in the orbit of two stars that was blocking the light.

His bosses spent several weeks verifying his observation, and ultimately concluded that Cukier had discovered a planet 6.9 times larger than Earth and only the 13th planet of its kind ever discovered.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/10/wolf-cukier-nasa-teen-intern-discovers-planet