NEID exoplanet instrument sees first light
Thursday, January 9, 2020 - 03:40
in Astronomy & Space
The new NEID instrument, now installed at the 3.5-meter WIYN telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Southern Arizona, USA, has made its first observations. The NSF-NASA funded instrument is designed to measure the motion of nearby stars with extreme precision—roughly three times better than the previous generation of state-of-the-art instruments—allowing us to detect, determine the mass of, and characterize exoplanets as small as Earth.