Star search leads UBC astronomy student to 17 previously unidentified planets
Credit to Author: Glenda Luymes| Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2020 23:56:53 +0000
A UBC astronomy student has discovered 17 planets outside our solar system after searching 200,000 stars for signs that a planet may be orbiting around them.
Michelle Kunimoto’s discoveries, which are called “planetary candidates” until they can be independently verified, include a rocky, Earth-sized orb in the habitable zone of its star.
The planet is called kic-7340288 b, and its uninspiring name disguises a rather remarkable discovery.
Kunimoto found the planet by analyzing publicly available data gathered by NASA’s Kepler satellite. During its four-year mission, the satellite looked for planets, particularly those in habitable zones, where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.
The mission found about 4,700 planets, but only 15 confirmed planets in the habitable zone.
Michelle Kunimoto (left) poses for a photo with her professor Jaymie Matthews in this file photo from December 2016.
Kunimoto, who is completing her PhD, began looking for overlooked and less-obvious planets when she was still an undergraduate student at UBC, tracking them using the “transit method.”
While examining a set of 400 stars, she discovered four planets. Four years and 200,000 stars later, she’s adding another 17 planetary candidates to her name.
“Every time a planet passes in front of a star, it blocks a portion of that star’s light and causes a temporary decrease in the star’s brightness,” she explained. “By finding these dips, known as transits, you can start to piece together information about the planet, such as its size and how long it takes to orbit.”
A Star Trek fan who grew up in Abbotsford and Vancouver, Kunimoto became interested in exoplanets while in university. Her work has implications for the search for life outside our solar system.
Future work could involve estimating how many planets are expected for stars with different temperatures, said her PhD supervisor and UBC professor Jaymie Matthews.
“A particularly important result will be finding a terrestrial habitable zone planet occurrence rate. How many Earth-like planets are there?” he said.
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