Press Release from Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network & University of California, Santa Barbara

In the last 6 months an international team of astronomers have used two batteries of cameras, one in the Canary Islands, Spain and one in South Africa, to discover 10 new planets in orbit around other stars (commonly known as extrasolar planets). The results from the Wide Area Search for Planets (SuperWASP) will be announced by team leader Dr Don Pollacco of Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland in his talk at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2008) in the UK on Tuesday 1 April.

SuperWASP Cameras

Scientists have found more than 270 extrasolar planets since the first one was discovered in the early 1990s. Most of these are detected through their gravitational influence on the star they orbit – as it moves the planet pulls on the star, tugging it back and forth. However, making these discoveries depends on looking at each star over a period of weeks or months and so the pace of discovery is fairly slow.

SuperWASP uses a different method. The two sets of cameras watch for events known as transits, where a planet passes directly in front of a star and blocks out some of the star's light, so from the Earth the star temporarily appears a little fainter. The SuperWASP cameras work as robots, surveying a large area of the sky at once and each night astronomers have data from millions of stars that they can check for transits and hence planets. The transit method also allows scientists to deduce the size and mass of each planet.

A team of collaborators around the world follows up each possible planet found by SuperWASP with more detailed observations to confirm or reject the discovery. Astronomers working at the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), affiliated with UCSB, use robotically-controlled telescopes in Arizona, Hawai'i and Australia to provide high quality data and to select only the best targets for intensive observation. This, together with data from the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma, the Swiss Euler Telescope in Chile and the Observatoire de Haute Provence in southern France, provides the final confirmation of the new discoveries.

45 planets have now been discovered using the transit method, and since they started operation in 2004 the SuperWASP cameras have found 15 of them – making them by far the most successful discovery instruments in the world. The SuperWASP planets have masses between a middleweight 0.5 and a huge 8.3 times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System. A number of these new worlds are quite exotic. For example, a year on WASP-12b (its orbital period) is just 1.1 days. The planet is so close to its star that its daytime temperature could reach a searing 2300 degrees Celsius.

SuperWASP team members Drs. Tim Lister and Rachel Street from LCOGT/UCSB are delighted with the results. "The flood of new discoveries from SuperWASP will revolutionize our understanding of how planets form. LCOGT's flexible global network of telescopes is an indispensible part of the world-wide effort to learn about the new planets."

Notes

The SuperWASP cameras are operated by a consortium including the Isaac Newton Group on La Palma, the Instituto Astrofisica Canarias, the University of Keele, the University of Leicester, the Open University, Queen’s University Belfast and St Andrew’s University.

Follow up [observations] of SuperWASP exoplanet candidates are obtained at the Tenagra-II 32inch Telescope in S. Arizona, the Faulkes-North Telescope on Hawai'i (part of the LCOGT network), the Faulkes-South Telescope in Australia (LCOGT network), the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma, the Swiss Euler Telescope at La Silla, Chile (in collaboration with colleagues at Geneva Observatory) and at the 1.93-m telescope of the Observatoire de Haute-Provence in France (in collaboration with colleagues at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille).

The SuperWASP cameras in La Palma and South Africa are operated with funding provided by the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2008) is hosted by Queen’s University Belfast. It is principally sponsored by the RAS and the STFC. NAM 2008 is being held together with the UK Solar Physics (UKSP) and Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial (MIST) spring meetings.

Contacts:
Drs. R. Street & T. Lister
Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network &
University of California, Santa Barbara,
Tel: 1-805-880-1600
E-mail: rstreet@lcogt.net, tlister@lcogt.net

Further Information

• SuperWASP Project
• Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network
• Images of the SuperWASP Cameras [1] [2] [3]
• Image of the Euler (Swiss) Telescope dome
• Image of the SOPHIE spectrograph at the Observatoire de Haute Provence
• UK Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting
• UK Royal Astronomical Society