A Year in 31 Hours ...
A research team conducting the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) have announced the discovery of their third planet, TrES-3. TrES incorporates automated telescopes based in Arizona, California and the Canary Islands.
The planet has been identified using the 'transit' method, whereby planets pass across the front of their star. A transiting planet passes directly between Earth and the star, which causes a slight dimming of the star's light. Searching for transiting exoplanets is ideally suited to automated small telescopes with wide fields-of-view.
TrES-3 was identified by Lowell Observatory's Planet Search Survey Telescope (PSST), and follow-up work was conducted by the Sleuth telescope, based in California.
TrES-3 is about 800 light-years distant and because it is so close to its host star, it is very hot, about 1,500 Kelvin.
Team member, Georgi Mandushev said, 'TrES-3 is an unusual planet as it orbits its parent star in just 31 hours.' 'It is also a very massive planet – about twice the mass of the solar system's biggest planet, Jupiter – and is one of the planets with the shortest known periods.'
Further observations of TrES-3 used telescopes from the Hungarian Automated Telescope Network, alongside the 10 metre Keck telescopes at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Read the Lowell Observatory press release here
