Lick Observatory's Automated Planet Finder is used to help calculate the new planet's mass. Laurie Hatch is a researcher at the Lick Observatory.
A group of eagle-eyed citizen scientists have discovered a giant gas planet hidden from view.
The planet TOI-2180 b is three times larger than Jupiter. It contains 105 times the mass of Earth in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. It's quite amazing in our solar system.
The details of the finding have been published in the journal and will be presented at the virtual press event.
Paul Dalba, who helped confirm the planet's existence, said it was an exciting planet to have found. It hits a number of things, including being relatively close to Earth, being close to its star, and being able to see it transit in front of it. It is very rare for an astronomer to find a planet that checks all three boxes.
Dalba said that the planet is special because it takes a long time to travel around its star, compared to gas giants outside our solar system. Astronomers will likely be able to learn more about it because of its relative proximity to Earth and its bright star.
A gas giant that is similar to TOI-2180 b is in the vicinity of a G-type star. Credit: NASA.
NASA's TESS satellite looks at one part of the sky for a month in order to locate exoplanets, which are stars other than our sun. When a planet crosses in front of a star, it is looking for dips in brightness.
Dalba said that before we believe we've found a planet, we need to see three dips or transits. A star masquerading as a planet could be the cause of a single transit event. TESS isn't focused on single transit events for these reasons. A small group of citizen scientists is.
Tom Jacobs, a group member and former U.S. naval officer, saw a light dim from the TOI-2180 star. Dalba studies planets that take a long time to travel around their stars.
Dalba and his colleagues were able to calculate the mass of TOI-2180 b using the Lick Observatory's Automated Planet Finder Telescope.
TESS is a survey satellite. Credit: NASA.
Dalba organized a campaign using 14 different telescopes to observe a transit event in the northern hemisphere. The effort resulted in 20,000 images of the TOI-2180 star, but none of them detected the planet with confidence.
The group estimates that TESS will see the planet transit its star again in February, when they're planning a follow up study. The National Science Foundation provides funding for Dalba's research.
The citizen planet hunters' group takes publicly available data from NASA satellites and looks for single transit events. The visual survey group uses a program to look at telescope data by eye, unlike professional astronomer who use a lot of data automatically.
Dalba said that it's hard to write code that can identify single transit events reliably. Humans are still beating code.
The TESS-Keck Survey was written by Paul A. Dalba. There is a new entry in the series. The Automated Planet Finder Telescope Confirmation of a Giant Planet on an outlying 261 Day Orbit was published in The Astronomical Journal. There is a DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac415b.
The journal has information about astronomy.
A team of people found a giant planet hidden in plain sight.
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