A New Planet Discovered By A NASA Teenager Intern

According to the latest announcement released by NASA, a teenager who is taking an internship at the agency has explored an unprecedentedly known planet with two stars. Using the constellation Pictor, the distance between the Earth and the newly discovered planet is estimated at the length of 1300 light-years.  

The finder of the new planet is Wolf Cukier, who is a 17-year-old intern from Scarsdale, New York. While staring through NASA orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), which is the tool he uses for his studies about two stars’ eclipse, he noticed a strange object that restricts the light. When focusing more closely, he decided to have his bosses help in the verification of this object.

Finally, after some weeks studying the young man’s observation, his bosses’ conclusion was their congratulations on Cukier’s discovery. It was not only a planet that had the size 6.9 times bigger than Earth but also a rare kind of planet that was found. 

In this agency press released lately, Cukier has told his story of finding this special new planet. Initially, he was assigned to use available data to continue the previous volunteers’ work on a system in which two stars’ mutual circulation forming the view eclipse. Three days after, he accidentally noticed an odd thing in the system TOI 1338. He even thought it was a stellar eclipse; however, it was a new planet, turned out. 

During the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting held in Honolulu, the study on the planet called TOI 1338 b was presented publically. It has pointed out that the nature of the planet is circumbinary, which is the establishment of eclipsing binary when the stellar companions appear in our circle. Moreover, it reported that one has 10% more massive than the Sun; meanwhile, the rest was much colder, darker and only one-third massive comparing to the Sun. 

This is viewed as a great development in astronomical history, especially for NASA’s achievements and the young finder - Wolf Cukier. As a big fan of Star Wars, he said that he expected his discovery would be the beginning of his glorious future in the field.