The Bad Astronomy Blog has a good post Super-Neptune caught by small telescopes.
"Astronomers at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have announced that they have discovered a planet orbiting a star 120 light years away, using roughly the same technique. Called 'transit searching', they use small telescopes to look at lots and lots of stars all at the same time. They look for tiny drops in the amount of starlight."
"But sometimes, a planet orbiting that star has its orbit aligned so that we see it edge-on, and that planet crosses the face of the star. When that happens, the star light dips a bit. In cases like that, the star is flagged for more observations. If the culprit is a planet, and it’s close to the star so that its orbital period is short, it’ll quickly pass in front again on the next orbit, and the dimming repeats. And again, and again."
They do a good job in a short article describing the technique in layman's terms. And the fact that they used really small 4" telescopes, makes it all the more accessible.
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