NASA Teen Intern Discovers New Planet

Three days into his internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, 17-year-old teen Wolf Cukier discovered a planet that is nearly 7 times larger than earth.

Cuckier in a NASA statement said, “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.” As part of his job, Cukier examines variations in star brightness captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and uploaded to the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project.

As it is customary for a new planet discovered by TESS Cukier's new planet is now called "TOI 1338 b," (until a formal name for the planet is determined). It is the first circumbinary planet, a world orbiting two stars, and a first for TESS. According to NASA, the two stars orbit each other every 15 days. And one is about 10 percent larger than our Sun while the other is about one-third of the Sun’s mass. The smaller one is cooler and dimmer. NASA also explained, “the TOI 1338 system lies 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Pictor.”(1 light-year = 6 trillion miles).

Cukier co-authored a paper along with scientists from Goddard, San Diego State University, the University of Chicago and other institutions. The paper has been submitted to a scientific journal. According to the paper's lead author Veselin Kostov, observations of binary systems are biased toward finding larger planets.

 According to NASA, the Kepler and K2 missions previously discovered 12 circumbinary planets similar to TOI 1338 b, in 10 systems.