Two high school students from Massachusetts have spearheaded the discovery of four new exoplanets, with their findings published on January 25 in The Astronomical Journal.
This is a milestone these young researchers will cherish lifelong. Kartik Pinglé (16) and Jasmine Wright (18) joined the Student Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and MIT just months ago. The program pairs students with leading scientists for year-long, cutting-edge astrophysics projects.
For their project, they collaborated with Tansu Daylan, a researcher at MIT's Kavli Institute.
Using data from NASA's TESS satellite, the students analyzed subtle dips in starlight—signs of planets transiting their host stars. They confirmed four such transits around the Sun-like star HD 108236, located approximately 200 light-years from Earth.
Follow-up observations verified the presence of four planets. Three are sub-Neptune gas giants, slightly smaller than Neptune. The fourth is a super-Earth, a rocky world larger than ours, according to the team.
All orbit extremely close to their star, with periods ranging from just under four Earth days to 19.5 Earth days. By contrast, Mercury takes 88 days to orbit our Sun.
Tansu Daylan notes these worlds are particularly compelling for study. "Just like in our solar system, these planets formed from the same disk around their star but evolved into diverse types with varied atmospheres and climates due to their orbits," he explains. "We aim to uncover the core processes driving planetary formation and evolution using this system."
Kartik plans to pursue applied mathematics or astrophysics post-graduation, while Jasmine has secured a spot in a five-year astrophysics master's at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
