Warwick students use robot telescopes to hunt for planets

A team of University of Warwick science students have announced that they are joining a global search for new planets after unveiling a set of 12 robotically controlled telescopes.

The telescopes will be based at the European Southern Observatory in northern Chile, but remotely operated by a team from Warwick’s Physics department.

These new telescopes will help form a wide-field observation system called the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS).

The NGTS provides a demonstration of unity between UK universities, with four universities (Warwick, Leicester, Queen’s Belfast and Cambridge) joining forces with the Geneva Observatory and the German Space Agency (DLR) in a bid to discover new planets in the universe.

To fund the venture the NGTS have had to seek help from the consortium institutes who are currently meeting the £2.5m capital costs of the project, whilst the running costs are also being funded by the UK through the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

As a system of research, the telescopes are operated by the detection of any dimming of a star’s light when a planet happens to cross over it.

The head of the project, Dr Peter Wheatley, and members of the Physics department explained the process: “The 12 robotic telescopes of NGTS have been designed to detect smaller dips in star brightness than previous ground-based surveys, down to just 0.1 percent of the light from the star.”

The launch of the project marks an age of increasing expenditure where space research is concerned.

It follows major technological developments that have taken place in previous years, and will allow a deeper level of research into the brightness of stars.

The project will cover more sky than previous projects, examine a greater number of bright stars, and will find planets that are bright enough for detailed study by other instruments, such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yusef Al-Ramah, a first-year Physics student, commented: “The NGTS project is a vitally important part of our bid in finding new planets and seeing our university being actively involved in this hunt is a massive merit to both our Physics department and the Physics community in general”.