Researcher on planet discovery team

Software developed by Massey astronomer Dr Ian Bond is again at the centre of a planetary discovery. The latest planet found by Dr Bond and an international team of astronomers may be a link in the scientific search for signs of life on this type of planets, orbiting stars in the vicinity of the sun. 

The new planet is two to three times the size of the earth and is orbiting a tiny star estimated to be about six per cent of the mass of the sun. Already it has become known in the astronomy world as MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb. It establishes a record for the lowest mass planet to orbit a normal star.

Dr Bond says the discovery is significant because it indicates that even the lowest mass stars can host planets. The finding suggests there could be low-mass stars found near the sun with planets of a similar mass as Earth. Dr Bond says in the near future it may be possible to see signs of life on planets like this,, when NASA launches a more powerful successor to the orbiting Hubble space telescope.

The discovery is led by the Japan-New Zealand Microlensing Observation in Astrophysics (MOA) collaboration, which includes scientists at more than a dozen universities and observatories around the world. Dr Bond, at the Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences in Auckland, is part of the MOA team. The aim is to discover distant solar systems using a technique known as gravitational microlensing. This effect enables a star and any orbiting planets to act like a giant magnifying glass.

The observations were made with the world's largest telescope devoted to microlensing telescope supplied by Japan to the Mt John Observatory in New Zealand. The software system for the analysis of this data is the work of Dr Bond.

From the giant New Zealand telescope millions of stars can be monitored every night. In one night as much as 100GB of data is collected - enough to fill 200 CDs.

The MOA group is made up of astronomers from Nagoya University, Konan University, Nagano National College of Technology, and Tokyo Metropolitan College of Aeronautics in Japan, as well as Massey University, The University of Auckland, Mt John Observatory, the University of Canterbury, Victoria University in New Zealand, as well as Dr David Bennett of Notre Dame University. Additional astronomers include staff from the Warsaw University Observatory in Poland, the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, the University of Cambridge, the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, the Observatoire Midi-Pyr´en´ees, the Observatoire de Paris, the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and Heidelberg University.