Measuring a planet’s light dimming when it passes can give an accurate estimate of the size and density of a planet. But a transit can only be determined when a star and its planet line up when monitored by telescopes.
TOI-2180 b is also believed to be denser than Jupiter. It appears that it is not composed of elemental gases like helium and hydrogen. And the new planets mass equals about 105 Earths.
“With this new discovery, we are … pushing the limits of the kinds of planets we can extract from TESS observations,” Diana Dragomir, assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, explains. “TESS was not specifically designed to find such long-orbit exoplanets, but our team, with the help of citizen scientists, are digging out these rare gems nonetheless,” Dragomir added.
In many cases the hands-on approach of citizen scientists can be superior to counting on the algorithms alone for detecting new planets.
“It’s actually hard to write code that can go through a million light curves and identify single transit events reliably,” University of California, Riverside’s Dr. Paul Dalba said.
