Cameras help astronomers find three exoplanets

The new planets were seen to pass in front or transit their host star. When astronomers see a transit, they can work out the size, mass and make up of the planet and they can use the planets to study how solar systems form. The UK led Super Wasp (wide angle search for planets) programme uses wide angle lenses with Ikon L large area CCD cameras (DW436N-BV), each housing a vacuum sealed, TE cooled E2V 42-40 sensor with 2kx2k pixels, supplied by Andor Technology in Belfast.

According to Don Pollacco who leads the Super wasp team at QUB: 'The system we have is extremely powerful - we are very happy with our cameras which enable us to find candidate planets.

'We are the only team to have found transiting planets in the northern and southern hemispheres; for the first time we have both Super Wasp cameras running, giving complete coverage of the whole sky'.

Two of the new planets, Wasp 4 and Wasp 5, have been the first to be discovered by the Wasp cameras in South Africa, the third planet, Wasp 3 was in the north, using cameras sited in the Canary Islands.

Said Mark Donaghy, Andor's head of marketing: ''We are delighted that our cameras are playing such an important role in the search for new planets particularly with this recent discovery.

'We have worked closely with Dr Pollacco and his team for many years to provide a powerful, reliable solution in the search for new planets'.

The three new planets are about the size of Jupiter and are orbiting their stars very closely, which means that their surface temperatures will be more than 2000C.

By finding Jupiter-mass planets around other stars, this suggests that there are many Earth-sized planets waiting to be discovered as technology advances.

More information.