New Earths to be revealed in star survey

Queen's University Belfast is on a fresh hunt to discover new planets as part of an international partnership that includes UK universities and a company based in Belfast.

The goal is to find small rocky planets similar to earth but in a size range from two to eight times the diameter of Earth.

The project, the Next-Generation Transit Survey, involves a suite of very sensitive telescopes installed at the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile.

They will monitor the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars looking for the tiny change in brightness caused when a planet passes in front of the star as it orbits. Part of these telescopes were manufactured in Belfast.

Queen's participation was described as a "major coup" by Dr Christopher Watson from the university's Astrophysics Research Centre. The telescopes are exceptionally sensitive and will be able to spot these "super earths".

The Survey system will operate in robotic mode and data coming from it will be shared with astronomers around the world, the university said. A Queen's spinout company Andor Technology developed the camera equipment attached to these instruments.

“There is potential to make some remarkable discoveries with this system,” said Prof Stephen Smartt, director of the Astrophysics Research Centre.

“Our research scientists are making an impact in international projects and it’s tremendous to see Belfast-made detector technology at the heart of these machines,” he added in relation to Andor’s participation.

Academic partners in the project include the universities of Warwick, Leicester and Cambridge, along with Geneva University, Switzerland; and DLR Berlin, Germany.