Worth the Wait 🛰️⏳📅🪐
Watch Episode 15 of Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers!
Have you ever wondered what it's like to discover a brand-new world? In the last few decades, we've found over 5,000 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets—and there are likely millions, if not billions, more! Join Dr. Jessie Christiansen, Lead Scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Archive at Caltech IPAC as she interviews the brilliant minds behind the discovery of new planets in "Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers." Hear about their eureka moments and their favorite fictional planets, which Jessie will match to their closest real-world counterparts in the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Come explore the cosmos, one exoplanet at a time!
About this episode:
Worth the Wait 🛰️⏳📅🪐
NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope found its first planet candidate in 2009. Ten years later, KOI-4.01 was finally confirmed as an exoplanet by a team led by Dr. Ashley Chontos. The confirmation provided some bittersweet closure for the Kepler mission and also brought Ashley fame and fortune 😎 (well, for astronomers, anyway 🤓). In this episode, Jessie chats with Ashley about the series of fortunate events that led to the discovery—and also her favorite fictional planet!