There is a new planet roaming around our solar system.
Pluto was officially downgraded from a planet to a star in 2015 and some people have still not managed to get over it to this day. But Pluto best move over because there’s a new planet on the solar block.
“TOI 1338 b” has been discovered via NASA’s citizen science project entitled Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). According to research, it is approximately 1,300 light-years away from Earth and orbits two stars in the constellation Pictor.
What is even more remarkable is that its founder is a 17-year-old intern named Wolf Cukier during his first week.
“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,” said the high school senior. “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.”
The teenager has co-authored a paper on the discovery, which is currently under review.
