Planet find makes stars of Canterbury astronomers

Canterbury University astronomers have broken international ground with the discovery of a planet 38 times the size of Earth.

Doctoral scholar David Ramm, along with his supervisors, Professor John Hearnshaw and Dr Jovan Skuljan, stumbled on the planet three weeks ago, and yesterday the team broke the news to envious colleagues world-wide.

“It was unbelievable,” Mr Ramm said. “You never imagine you will actually do something like this — unbelievable.”

The planet itself is too dim to see directly but sits next to a parent star in the southern Milky Way.

As the planet orbits the star — this takes 324 days — the tug of the planet makes the star wobble.

Mr Ramm discovered the star’s wobble by chance, and the team later found 13-year-old satellite data that proved the planet’s existence and size. Of the 100 or so “extra- solar” planets discovered since the first in 1995, this is one of the biggest.

Its next transit of the star is May 2004 when, Professor Hearnshaw says, every astronomer worldwide will be watching.

“It’s a huge thing for New Zealand because there are only about a dozen astronomers in our country out of 7000 worldwide and we have discovered something as large as this, right here.”

Mr Ramm, a Foundation for Research Science and Technology Top Achiever doctoral scholar, was working on an unrelated project at Mount John Observatory, near Tekapo, when he made the discovery.

He and his colleagues had “kept it quiet” for three weeks to research the planet and prove its existence.

As for the name, that is up to the International Astronomical Union but at the University of Canterbury, the planet will be known as “David’s Planet”.

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