A Massive Gas Giant Found Circling TOI-2180

A team of professional astronomers and citizen scientists has discovered a giant exoplanet orbiting the G5-type star TOI-2180, which is 381 light-years away from us. With a mass of 2.755 Jupiters, it takes 260.8 days to complete one orbit of its star and is 0.828 AU from its star. Citizen scientists spotted the single-transit event of TOI-2180b in the data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Using the Automated Planet Finder telescope at Lick Observatory, professional astronomers observed the planet’s gravitational tug on the star, which allowed them to calculate the mass of TOI-2180b and estimate a range of possibilities for its orbit. Hoping to observe a second transit event, they organized a campaign using 14 different telescopes across three continents in the northern hemisphere. Over 11 days in August 2021, the effort resulted in 20,000 images of the TOI-2180 star, though none of them detected the planet with confidence.

SETI Institute Senior astronomer Franck Marchis will sit down with citizen astronomer Daryll LaCourse and Paul Dalba, lead author of the project, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of  California at Riverside and SETI Institute affiliate about this amazing discovery, result of a collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers.

WATCH LIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/LxxYYUeEuLs
WATCH LIVE ON FACEBOOK: https://fb.me/e/1WpzSyEN8