Interplanetary Fame

Two amateur Kiwi astronomers helped discover a planet 15,000 light years from Earth using simple backyard telescopes. Grant Christie and Jennie McCormick are part of a worldwide star-gazing collective called MicroFUN, led by Andrew Gould of Ohio State University. The new planet – which is roughly 3 times the size of Jupiter – was discovered using a technique called gravitational microlensing, when a massive object in space, such as a star or a black hole, crosses in front of a star shining in the background and is magnified in the process. Christie and McCormick share co-authorship of MicroFUN’s paper announcing the new planet to Astrophysical Journal Letters.