We have exciting news to share about Unistellar Network member Kevin Voeller, a high school science teacher in Huntington Beach, California. He鈥檚 the first Unistellar听听to have exoplanet transit data from his eVscope featured in a published scientific paper, as well as being listed as a co-author!
Voeller, along with two Unistellar Astronomers and a larger team of international astronomers, made observations of the transit of exoplanet WASP-148b as it crossed in front of its star. In doing so, the team was able to get a better understanding of how the exoplanet orbits its star, and even helped firm up a theory of solar system formation!
The exoplanet, found in 2020, is a so-called 鈥渉ot Jupiter.鈥 It鈥檚 about twice as big as Neptune and orbits more than ten times closer to its star than Earth does. Voeller鈥檚 data on the exoplanet鈥檚 transit, taken in April of 2021, agreed closely with the observations from the much bigger professional telescopes.
Voeller鈥檚 data was shown (far right) combined with data from two other eVscopes and agreed with the professional 1-meter telescopes’ results (credit: Wang et al. 2022). The red line shows the transit鈥檚 brightness dip.
The team鈥檚 results are set to be published in听The Astrophysical Journal Letters. You can find a听听on the听.
The paper鈥檚 insights came from the dip in the star鈥檚 brightness that Voeller and the rest of the astronomers saw as WASP-148b briefly blocked out its light. Alongside data from telescopes in Hawaii and Arizona, Voeller鈥檚 data confirmed a key component of the planet鈥檚 orbit and guided other measurements that showed for the first time that WASP-148b spins around its star in an orbit that鈥檚 nearly in line with the star鈥檚 equator.
That kind of orbit means the WASP-148 system probably formed in a relatively calm and orderly fashion, free from outside gravitational influences or cataclysmic events. It鈥檚 something astronomers thought they might see, but with so little data on exoplanets and their stars, they didn鈥檛 have much data to back up their theories.
Aside from beginning to put actual observations behind theories, the paper gives us more insight into how different solar systems form, and gives researchers a better understanding of why different systems 鈥 including our own Solar System 鈥 look the way they do today.
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