Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Jul 8, 2005 18:15:23 GMT -6
Amateur Detects New Transiting Exoplanet
From Sky & Telescope...
July 7, 2005
A day before an international team announced a new transiting planet orbiting the star HD 149026 on June 30th, California amateur astronomer Ron Bissinger detected a partial transit of that planet. He also detected partial transits during the next two opportunities, allowing him to produce a composite light curve of an entire event. This new find, HD 149026b, is now the third transiting exoplanet detected by amateurs.
"Ron's data are of excellent quality," says professional astronomer Gregory P. Laughlin (University of California, Santa Cruz), who is a member of the team that discovered the new planet. Laughlin has also helped organize the Transitsearch.org network to enable amateurs like Bissinger to detect such events. At the time the planet's discovery was announced, Laughlin predicted that amateurs would detect the transits, but he also noted that this planet was much harder to detect than the other two transiting exoplanets, HD 209458b and TrES-1. The new discovery thus highlights the increasing prowess of amateur astronomers armed with CCDs.
More here: skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1543_1.asp
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As I said in a previous post, the era of the University professional astronomer with sophisticated equipment is is being encroached by amateurs more and more.
The secrets of the skies discovered by average people. Great stuff...
