British teenager discovers planet as large as Jupiter
At 15, high school student locates WASP-142b, 1,000 light years from Earth
Tom Wagg never expected to find anything much during a weeklong placement in the astrophysics department at Keele University in England two years ago.
But when the high school student noticed a dip in light patterns around a star about 1,000 light years from Earth, he thought to himself: “I think I may actually have got one!”
“I never expected anything like this. My main reason for going (there) was to learn more about astrophysics,” Wagg said in a phone interview Friday from the U.K., where he is a student at Newcastle-under-Lyme School in Staffordshire.
Wagg had uncovered a new planet roughly the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet. It’s located in the southern constellation of Hydra.
Just15 at the time, Wagg’s discovery may be the most impressive ever made by a budding young scientist, said Coel Hellier, a professor of astrophysics at Keele who supervised the placement.
“Professional astronomers are getting quite good at finding these (planets), but this is the first time I think any planets have been found by a schoolboy during work experience,” Hellier said.
Wagg was observing images collected by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project, which monitors and photographs tens of millions of stars, when he noticed small dips of light on a star, caused by a planet passing in front of it.
“He found one of the stars had a dip that was occurring every two-day orbital period, and that was being caused by this planet,” Hellier said, noting it has taken two years to con- firm the discovery.
“In order to prove that it actually is a planet, you then have to find out whether it has the right mass to be a planet, and whether it has the right size to be a planet.”
Wagg said he experienced “a mix of relief and excitement” when he finally got the confirmation this week that he had, indeed, found a planet.
“I’ve had this two years where I’ve been (thinking), ‘I think I’ve done it,’ but you never know. And then it’s that moment when you’re like, ‘I’ve actually done it!’ ”
In a news release, WASP said the planet has been temporarily named WASP-142b, as it is the 142nd planet discovered since the project was launched in 2006.
The planet’s official name will be decided in a competition co-ordinated by the International Astronomical Union, Wagg said.
But what would the 17-year-old want his planet to be called?
“Zeus is the Greek equivalent of Jupiter, so I figured that was quite similar, but he’s kind of more volatile, and (the new planet is) closer to the star, so it’s hotter and more volatile,” he said.
“It’s crazy, I’m so happy.”