Moorhead Alumna and emeritus faculty co-discover new exoplanet
Moorhead Department of Physics and Astronomy alumna Madelyn Madsen, class of 2023, and Professor Emeritus Matt Craig are part of a team that discovered 30 planets around other stars. Data taken by Madelyn at the Paul P. Feder Observatory at the MSUM Regional Science Center in summer 2020 was one of many data sets used to confirm that the object “TOI-2031b” is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star.
Minnesota State Moorhead has been part of the ground-based observer follow-up program for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite for several years, and roughly 10 students have submitted data on potential exoplanets. The follow-up program of which Moorhead is a part is one step in a series of observations needed to confirm detection of and fully characterize a planet.
The paper announcing the discovery, “The TESS Grand Unified Hot Jupiter Survey. III. Thirty More Giant Planets,” is available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01855 and has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.