A 2009 graduate of North Hunterdon High School has discovered a planet — and a Canadian brewery has named a new ale after it.
Lebanon Township native Thea Kozakis credits her father’s interest in the night sky and an astronomy class she took as a high school sophomore with sparking the curiosity that led her to become an astronomy major at the College of Charleston (South Carolina). There, she works with astrophysicist Joe Carson.
It was while working in Carson’s lab that she and a friend discovered Kappa Andromedae b — K And b, for short.
K And b orbits the star Kappa in the constellation Andromeda. The “b” designation indicates that it is the first confirmed planet in the Kappa system, hence Kappa Andromeda b.
“It’s easier to say ‘Derek’,” Kozakis said, which is what she and her friend and lab mate Laura Steven dubbed the planet.
The star Kappa is about 1,020 trillion miles from Earth, meaning it would take 170 years to get there — if you were traveling at the speed of light. Don't pack for a quick trip. It takes light eight minutes just to travel from our sun to the Earth.
Still, Kappa is one of the closest stars to Earth and, although “sort of dim,” Kozakis said, it is faintly visible in the night sky in July.
That’s not true of Derek.
Despite its great size — 13 times the mass of Jupiter — light reflected by Derek is completely overwhelmed by the light coming from Kappa.
While scientists have identified more than 900 exoplanets, planets outside our own solar systems, most are found when astrophysicists detect “wobbles” in a star’s orbit caused by the gravitational pull of one or more of its planets.
Our sun wobbles mainly because of Jupiter, Kozakis said.
“Most people don’t look for (a planet), because it’s really hard to find because the star is so bright you can’t see anything around it,” Kozakis said. Derek is one of just a dozen of the more than 900 known exoplanets to be discovered visually.
Kappa’s great size (massive stars are more likely to form planets), relatively young age (planets newly formed from stars remain hot in their youth and are easier to spot), and relative proximity to Earth made it a prime target for Carson.
Kozakis and Stevens used a computer program to digitally “erase” light from dozens of such stars photographed by a telescope in Hawaii, hoping the technique would reveal light reflected by one of the star’s orbiting planets, if any existed.
Kozakis had already used the technique, without success, on 30 similarly massive stars, when she got to Kappa.
This time the effort paid off.
At 13 times the mass of Jupiter, Derek is among the largest planets in the universe. Anything larger is considered a failed or dead star, according to space scientists.
Derek’s great size inspired a Canadian brewery to name an ale after it: “Super Jupiter.”
The beer meisters at Howe Sound brewery in Squamish, British Columbia, created the brew — a grapefruit IPA — after meeting a University of Toronto researcher who helped confirm Kozakis’ and Stevens’ discovery.
While Howe Sound generally distributes its brews in the U.S. only in Washington and Oregon, Carson and Kozakis’ father got their hands on some.
People who like IPA like Super Jupiter, according to Kozakis. But she doesn’t like alcohol, and said she found it “gross.”
Kozakis enters Cornell University in the fall, working toward a Ph.D. in astronomy and space science. “‘Astrophysics’ sounds a lot scarier,” she said.
“It would be really cool to go into space,” Kozakis said, although she doesn't know what she'd do there. “They don't usually send astronomers.”
“My dad would want me to bring him with me. He’s already told me that.”
Kozakis has high praise for astronomy, because it brings people together, she said.
“We’re all human,” she said. “It’s a miracle we’re all here.”