An internship at NASA would be a big deal for anyone. Even more so when you’re a young teen who loves space and science. And for most, just being at such an amazing job would be the highlight. You would soak up the knowledge that the scientists have to share with you, wanting to learn as much as you can before moving on to college.

But for a New York teenager on his second internship at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Md., just being there wasn’t quite enough. He had to go and discover a planet. And not just any planet, but one that is 1300-light-years away and seven times larger than Earth. It orbits not just one, but two stars.

Photo from Shareably

When Wolf Cukier, 17, was on his second summer working for NASA. Alongside NASA researcher Veselin Kostov, he was given some instruction and then let loose to learn on his own. Kostov told The Washington Post, Cukier was his first intern.  “I gave him a brief outline of what we do, and he learned everything by himself,” Kostov said.

He learned really quickly. He really developed a very good understanding of the field.”

Cukier was working with NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) for the first time, he said. TESS watches the sky, searching for stars that lose some brightness due to a potential planet crossing its path. Having worked with the TESS Citizen Science Project, which let anyone with access search through star system data, Cukier said he had somewhat of an idea of what he was going to search for.

When Cukier found something ‘suspicious’, he got the attention of Kostov. “After we saw the original transit, we looked at the full light curve and saw three transits,” Cukier said. The pair then worked for hours to make sure the details Cukier had noticed were actually a planet, by going over the star’s data that had been collected.

NASA Goddard

“It was just Wolf and me in the first couple of hours, and when we were 99 percent certain the two traits we saw were real, we started reaching out to colleagues,” Kostov said. “It definitely coloured the rest of the internship,” Cukier said. “Now, not only was I working on searching for additional planets, I was learning the full verification that goes into verifying a planet when we suspect it to be one.”

To verify a planet, Cukier worked with data tools and researchers from universities in Chicago, Massachusetts and California. Kostov noted that this time the process moved quickly, only taking a few months to verify Cukier’s planet discovery, which was named TOI 1338b.

Also, Kostov said, the discovery shows that TESS has the ability to find planets, and that it likely will find more as time goes on. “Tess is the only instrument that would allow us to discover this type of planet,” he said. Cukier said he planned to major in astrophysics or physics, following graduation from high school. Either way, the young man can be assured that he will likely be the only student entering college having discovered a planet.

Sources: Shareably | The Washington Post | The Independent