A New World

A most beautiful thing:  Hitherto unknown planet TOI-1338 b, discovered in 2019 by a 17-year-old NASA intern named Wolf.

The planet is a gas giant, like our solar system’s Jovian planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

During the summer of 2019, a 17-year-old high school student named Wolf Cukier arrived at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center ready for a summer of learning at their new prestigious, coveted internship. He was put in charge of examining data collected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which searches the universe for systems with two stars. Only three days into his new job, the teen spotted a blip in the data of one system which indicated the presence of a previously unknown planet. A year and a half later, NASA has published what they know about this newly discovered planet named TOI-1338 b.

TOI-1338 b is considered a Neptune-like gas exoplanet, about 6.9 times larger than Earth. An exoplanet is a planet outside of our solar system. This example lies 1,317 light years away from Earth and orbits its two stars roughly every 95 days. Discovery of planets such as TOI-1338 b are a main function of NASA’s TESS. The system documents dual-star systems to track the variations in light. Known as an eclipsing binary, one star may at times block or eclipse the other from a viewpoint here on Earth.

In these troubled times, may it bring peace to realize that our problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this vast universe. We are but a blip in spacetime.

Have faith. Have hope. Trust in our Creator.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 

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