Nasa intern discovers new planet on 3rd day at work
The planet is only the 13th of its kind to be discovered and is 6.9 times larger than Earth
A 17-year-old Wolf Cukier has discovered a new planet some 1,300 light years away from Earth on his third day as intern at The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), reports CBS media.
Nasa has said that while assigned to study how two stars cross paths when creating an eclipse, Cukier focused on a solar system called TOI 1338 with the help of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess) and noticed something blocking the light.
It turned out what he noticed was a previously unknown planet.
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"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," Cukier said, according to a Nasa press release.
"About three days into my internship, 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."
According to a report by MSN media, after several weeks of verification of Cukier's observations, Nasa concluded that Cukier's planet was only the 13th planet of its kind to be discovered and was 6.9 times larger than Earth.
