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American Astronomical Society

Westchester High School Senior Discovers Planet During NASA Internship Westchester High School Senior Discovers Planet During NASA Internship
Westchester High School Senior Discovers Planet During NASA Internship Three days into a summer internship at NASA, 17-year-old Scarsdale High School senior Wolf Cukier discovered a brand-new planet 1,300 light-years away. Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Cukier found a “circumbinary planet,” or a celestial object that orbits two stars. Cukier’s discovery came in June, but it was only brought to light this week by NASA at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu. “I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a sy…