BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy A Schoolboy Discovered a New Planet

When English high school student Tom Wagg was 15, he did work experience at Keele University. He was working with a team checking data on extrasolar planets. He spotted something which caused a tiny dip in a star's light, possibly as a planet passed in front of it. Tom reported this.

One light dip doesn't necessarily make a planet. But it makes a planet candidate which needs further observations. These have happened over the past two years. The WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) collaboration has now confirmed Tom's discovery as a planet. It's been given the catalogue number WASP-142b.

Tom may be the youngest person to have discovered a planet.

A picture of WASP 142-b. It's too far away to image directly, so space artist David Hardy has used the data on the planet and star to suggest what it might be like.

Although Tom Wagg was in a university setting when he made his discovery, there are many opportunities for anybody who's interested to take part in citizen science activities. I've classified galaxies and looked for the tell-tale signal of a planet transiting its star.