School boy discovers a new planet: After the invention of Powerful telescopes, the scientists were all about finding new planets and verifying the data if any other alien life exists.
While most of them are having difficulties in doing it, a common school boy (Not so common anymore) from Staffordshire found a planet 1,000 light-years away.
Going into the details, Tom Wagg, 17 is now a student at Newcastle-under-Lyme School. He made his planetary discovery when he was 15 while doing work experience at Keele University. But it took two years for him to prove its existence.
He was 15 years old when he spotted the planet while doing work experience at Keele University and it took two years to prove its existence. ” I was very excited at the prospect of finding a new planet on my own,” Tom said.
Keele University’s Professor Coel Hellier said that Tom spent most of his time hunting for the planet. He said that Tom went through archives of data for “good planet candidates”.
“Tom searched through images of the night sky looking for tiny dips in light caused by a planet passing in front of its star,” Professor said.
Prof Hellier said follow-up observations were carried out by telescopes in Chile to confirm Tom’s results. Later the data provided by Tom was studied by astronomers at the University of Geneva and the University of Liege, to prove that it had the right size and mass to be a planet.
Unfortunately this planet is relatively big, about the size of Jupiter, but astronomers are working hard to find much smaller, more earth-sized planets.
