Media and Resources

1st April 2008   
The (Super)Wasp Factory Finds 10 New Planets In The Last 6 Months

In the last 6 months an international team of astronomers have used two batteries of cameras, one in the Canary Islands and one in South Africa, to discover 10 new planets in orbit around other stars (commonly known as extrasolar planets). The results from the Wide Area Search for Planets (SuperWASP) will be announced by team member Dr Don Pollacco of Queen’s University Belfast, in his talk at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2008) on Tuesday 1 April.

More information on the planets can be found on this page.

Full details can be found from the press release: MS Word .doc

Schematic of the new planets Without details With details

31st Oct 2007    SuperWASP announces discovery of three planets

The SuperWASP consortium has announced the discovery of three transiting hot-Jupiters. WASP-3b, discovered by the SuperWASP-North observatory is in the constellation Lyra and WASP-4b and WASP-5b, which are the first planets to be discovered by the SuperWASP-South observatory are both in Phoenix. More information on the planets can be found on this page.

Full details can be found from the press release: MS Word .doc | PDF

The following images can be used to accompany this story:
Artists impression of an extra-solar planet (Copyright STFC)
Scale sizes of the new wasp planets and parent stars (Credit: Iain McDonald)
SuperWASP-South observatory (South Africa) nightime vista (Credit: David Wilson)
SuperWASP cameras (Credit: David Anderson)

11th Aug 2007    SuperWASP featured on BBC2's "The Cosmos" series

SuperWASP-North and the project  principal scientist Don Pollacco were featured in the BBC2 series "The Cosmos - A beginners guide" presented by Adam Hart-Davis. More information can be found here or alternatively watch a short clip below (courtesy of Dave Rothery, OU):

 

(c) Copyright 2007 The Open University
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26th Sept 2006    SuperWASP discovers two planets press release

SuperWASP has discovered 2 new extra-solar transiting planets in the constellations Andromeda and Delphinus.  The discoveries were made with data from the SuperWASP-North observatory and confirmed by radial velocity using the newly commissioned SOPHIE spectrograph at the observatoire de Haute Provence.
The planets, known as WASP-1b and WASP-2b, are roughly Jupiter sized gas-giant planets in close orbits to their parent stars. They are among the hottest planets yet discovered.

Full details can be found from the press release: MS Word .doc | PDF
The scientific paper submitted to MNRAS can be found here: Astro-ph

News Articles:
BBC News online article
New Scientist Space
Astrobiology Magazine (NASA)
The Planetary Society

 

Oct 2004    SuperWASP featured on BBC's 'Sky at Night'

The October 'Planet Quest' edition of 'Sky at Night' featured a short clip on the SuperWASP project and can be viewed from the BBC website by Clicking Here

Sept 2004   ING Newsletter (Don Pollacco, Ian Skillen, Javier Mendez) (.pdf) Click Here

Apr 2004     Inauguration of SuperWASP-N

Pictures and video clips of the remote inauguration of the SuperWASP-N observatory from ING's sea-level office are available by Clicking Here

Apr 2004     BBC News Article (online) on SuperWASP Click Here

Apr 2004     PPARC Press release Click Here

 

Web Resources

California & Carnegie Planet Search: http://exoplanets.org/

Extrasolar planets encyclopaedia:    http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/encycl.html

Darwin Project:    http://ast.star.rl.ac.uk/darwin/Welcome.html

Extrasolar visions:    www.extrasolar.net