MEXICO: A teenager on work experience discovered a new planet 1000 light years away.Tom Wagg was 15 when he spotted a tiny dip in the light of a distant star during his week-long placement at Keele University. After two years of further research, astronomers have confirmed that he witnessed a mystery planet passing in front of the star.
The planet is located so far away – in the constellation of Hydra at the southern end of the Milky Way – it cannot be seen directly through a telescope, but is thought to be about the same size as Jupiter, orbiting its star every two days. Tom, now 17, said: “It’s really exciting. I was amazed. It’s definitely something you can tell people about.
“It’s a gas planet and is known as a ‘hot Jupiter’. As it’s so close to a star, there could be other planets around it.”
The discovery makes the student from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, one of the youngest people to find a new planet.
It has been catalogued as Wasp-142b as it is the 142nd to be discovered by the Wasp project.
The Wasp (Wide Angle Search for Planets) consortium also involves scientists from the Universities of Warwick, Cambridge and St Andrews, working with scientists in Switzerland, France and Belgium.
Tom likened stargazing to looking back in time, because the stars are so far away from Earth we see them as they were hundreds or thousands of years ago.
His interest in astronomy dates back to when he was given a telescope when he was seven.
While studying for his GCSEs, one of his teachers recommended that he approach Keele to gain a greater insight into the subject. The teenager soon found himself studying data collected through surveys of the night skies, where millions of stars were being monitored.
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