University of Leicester Joins the Search for Thousands of New Planets

April 2004


SuperWASP is the most ambitious project of its kind anywhere in the world

Astronomers at the University of Leicester and from around the UK are celebrating today 
(Friday, April 16) the opening of the SuperWASP facility at the astronomical observatory on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, designed to discover thousands of planets outside of our own solar system.

Only one hundred extra-solar planets are currently known, and the new planets discovered with SuperWASP will help astronomers to understand how planets form and evolve. 

Planets around other stars are too faint to be seen directly, but if they pass in front of their parent star they can block enough light for the dip in brightness to be detectable from Earth. SuperWASP will discover planets by very carefully measuring the brightness of millions of stars every night, searching for the tell-tale dips that will reveal new planets. 

SuperWASP is the most ambitious project of its kind anywhere in the world, with the largest number of cameras covering the widest area of sky and the largest number of stars. Construction of the SuperWASP facility began in May 2003, and the instrument is entering its operational phase today (Friday, April 16). 

The University of Leicester is leading the effort to store and analyse the vast amount of data that will be collected with the SuperWASP cameras. Every nights' observing with SuperWASP will generate 60 GB of data - about the size of a typical modern computer hard disk - and the total database will grow to become one of the largest in the world. Searching this vast database for rare planets and other exciting astronomical discoveries (such as supernovae in distant galaxies) will require a major software effort. The 
data will be processed in Belfast and then transfered to Leicester for storage and analysis at the Leicester Database and Archive Service (LEDAS) at the University of Leicester.

Dr Peter Wheatley, leading the SuperWASP team at Leicester, said "It is tremendously exciting to think that we are really about to discover new worlds around other stars. This is an important step toward understanding where we come from and whether life is likely to exist around other stars."

The Principal Investigator for the Project, Dr Don Pollacco (Queens University Belfast), said "While the construction and initial commissioning phases of the facility have been only nine months long, SuperWASP represents the culmination of many years work from astronomers within the WASP consortium. Data from SuperWASP will lead to exciting
progress in many areas of astronomy, ranging from the discovery of planets around nearby stars to the early detection of other classes of variable objects such as supernovae in distant galaxies".

Dr René Rutten (Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) said "SuperWASP is a very nice example of how clever ideas to exploit the latest technology can open new windows to explore the universe around us, and shows that important scientific programmes can be done at very modest cost."

The SuperWASP facility is operated by the WASP consortium involving astronomers from the following institutes: Queen's University Belfast, University of Cambridge, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (La Palma), University of Keele, University of Leicester, Open University and University of St Andrews.

The SuperWASP instrument has cost approximately £400K, and was funded by major financial contributions from Queen's University Belfast, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Open University. SuperWASP is located in the Spanish Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Canary Islands which is operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC).

Pictures of the SuperWASP facility and some of its astronomical first-light images are available at www.http://www.superwasp.org/firstlight.html

Notes for Editors

SuperWASP has a novel optical design comprising up to eight scientific cameras (currently starting operation with five cameras), each resembling in operation a household digital camera, and collectively attached to a conventional telescope mount. SuperWASP has a
field-of-view some 2000 times greater than a conventional astronomical telescope. The instrument, which will eventually be capable of running under robotic control, is housed in its own customised building.

Web Links

The SuperWASP project home page: http://www.superwasp.org
The Leicester SuperWASP homepage: http://www.wasp.le.ac.uk
The Leicester Database and Archive Service (LEDAS): http://www.ledas.ac.uk 
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC): 
http://www.pparc.ac.uk
The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING): http://www.ing.iac.es

Technical Details

The SuperWASP facility consists of:

Digital cameras (with CCD detectors) from Andor Technology (Belfast)
200mm telephoto lenses from Canon
A robotic telescope mount from Optical Mechanical Inc. 
Customised Enclosure by Jeremy Rainford of Gendall Rainford Products (Cornwall)
Liebert Hiross air-conditioning
GPS time service by Garmin
Lightning protection equipment by Farrell Engineering (Dublin)
Computing by Dell, 3Com and APC

Further technical details can be found from the project home page at
www.http://www.superwasp.org/technical.html

Contact details

Dr Peter Wheatley, Lecturer in Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 
University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, telephone +44 (0)116 252 2377, mobile +44 (0)786 772 8114, Fax +44 (0)116 252 2070, email pjw@astro.le.ac.uk

Julia Maddock, Press Officer, Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, telephone +44 (0)1793-442094, mobile +44 (0)7901514975, Fax: +44 (0)1793-442002, email julia.maddock@pparc.ac.uk

Dr Alan Fitzsimmons, APS Division, Department of Pure & Applied Physics, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, telephone +44 (0)2890-273142, Fax +44 (0) 2890-273110, mobile +44 (0) 775 907 9807, email a.fitzsimmons@qub.ac.uk

This document has been approved by the head of department or section.