WASP or Wide Angle Search for Planets is an international consortium of several academic organisations performing an ultra-wide angle search for exoplanets using

transit photometry Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of ...

. The array of

robotic telescope A robotic telescope is an astronomical telescope and detector system that makes observations without the intervention of a human. In astronomical disciplines, a telescope qualifies as robotic if it makes those observations without being operated ...

s aims to

survey Survey may refer to: Statistics and human research * Statistical survey, a method for collecting quantitative information about items in a population * Survey (human research), including opinion polls Spatial measurement * Surveying, the techniq ...

the entire sky, simultaneously monitoring many thousands of stars at an

apparent visual magnitude Apparent magnitude () is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth. An object's apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance from Earth, and any extinction of the object's lig ...

from about 7 to 13. WASP is the detection program composed of the Isaac Newton Group, IAC and six universities from the United Kingdom. The two continuously operating, robotic observatories cover the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively. SuperWASP-North is at

Roque de los Muchachos Observatory Roque de los Muchachos Observatory ( es, Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, ORM) is an astronomical observatory located in the municipality of Garafía on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain. The observatory site is operated b ...

on the mountain of that name which dominates

La Palma La Palma (, ), also known as ''La isla bonita'' () and officially San Miguel de La Palma, is the most north-westerly island of the Canary Islands, Spain. La Palma has an area of making it the fifth largest of the eight main Canary Islands. The ...

in the Canary Islands. WASP-South is at the

South African Astronomical Observatory South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's funct ...

, Sutherland in the arid Roggeveld Mountains of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. These use eight wide-angle cameras that simultaneously monitor the sky for planetary transit events and allow the monitoring of millions of stars simultaneously, enabling the detection of rare transit events. Instruments used for follow-up characterization employing

doppler spectroscopy Doppler spectroscopy (also known as the radial-velocity method, or colloquially, the wobble method) is an indirect method for finding extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in t ...

to determine the exoplanet's mass include the

HARPS The High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle planet-finding spectrograph installed in 2002 on the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. ...

spectrograph of ESO's 3.6-metre telescope as well as the Swiss

Euler Telescope Leonhard Euler Telescope, or the Swiss EULER Telescope, is a national, fully automatic reflecting telescope, built and operated by the Geneva Observatory. It is located at an altitude of at European Southern Observatory, ESO's La Silla Observato ...

, both located at

La Silla Observatory La Silla Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Chile with three telescopes built and operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Several other telescopes are located at the site and are partly maintained by ESO. The observatory is ...

, Chile. WASP's design has also been adopted by the

Next-Generation Transit Survey The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground-based robotic search for exoplanets. The facility is located at Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, about 2 km from ESO's Very Large Telescope and 0.5 km ...

. As of 2016, the ''

Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia is an astronomy website, founded in Paris, France at the Meudon Observatory by Jean Schneider in February 1995, which maintains a database of all the currently known and candidate extrasolar planets, with in ...

'' data base contains a total of 2,107 extrasolar planets of which 118 were discoveries by WASP.

Equipment

WASP consists of two robotic observatories; SuperWASP-North at

on the island of La Palma in the Canaries and WASP-South at the

, South Africa. Each observatory consists of an array of eight Canon 200 mm f1.8 lenses backed by high quality 2048 x 2048 science grade CCDs, the model used is the iKon-L manufactured by

Andor Technology Andor Technology Ltd is a developer and manufacturer of high performance light measuring solutions (scientific digital cameras). It became a subsidiary of Oxford Instruments after it was purchased for £176 million in December 2013. The company i ...

. The telescopes are mounted on an equatorial telescope mount built by Optical Mechanics, Inc. The large field of view of the Canon lenses gives each observatory a massive sky coverage of 490

square degree __NOTOC__ A square degree (deg2) is a non- SI unit measure of solid angle. Other denotations include ''sq. deg.'' and (°)2. Just as degrees are used to measure parts of a circle, square degrees are used to measure parts of a sphere. Analogous to ...

s per pointing.

Function

The observatories continuously monitor the sky, taking a set of images approximately once per minute, gathering up to 100

gigabytes The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix '' giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB. This definit ...

of data per night. By using the

transit method Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...

, data collected from WASP can be used to measure the brightness of each star in each image, and small dips in brightness caused by large planets passing in front of their parent stars can be searched for. One of the main purpose of WASP was to revolutionize the understanding of planet formation, paving the way for future space missions searching for 'Earth'-like worlds.

Structure

WASP is operated by a consortium of academic institutions which include: * Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias *

Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes or ING consists of three optical telescopes: the William Herschel Telescope, the Isaac Newton Telescope, and the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, operated by a collaboration between the UK Science and Technology Fa ...

Keele University Keele University, officially known as the University of Keele, is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, Keele ...

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by number of students. The majority of the OU's undergraduate students are based in the United Kingdom and principally study off- ...

* Queen's University Belfast * St. Andrews University *

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_lab ...

Warwick University , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (2020� ...

Wasp-39b and its parent star (artist’s impression)

On 26 September 2006, the team reported the discovery of two extrasolar planets: WASP-1b (orbiting at 0.038 AU (6 million km) from star once every 2.5 days) and WASP-2b (orbiting three-quarters that radius once every 2 days). On 31 October 2007, the team reported the discovery of three extrasolar planets: WASP-3b, WASP-4b and WASP-5b. All three planets are similar to Jovian mass and are so close to their respective stars that their orbital periods are all less than two days. These are among the shortest orbital periods discovered. The surface temperatures of the planets should be more than 2000 degrees Celsius, owing to their short distances from their respective stars. The WASP4b and WASP-5b are the first planets discovered by the cameras and researchers in South Africa. WASP-3b is the third planet discovered by the equivalent in La Palma. In August 2009, the discovery of

WASP-17b WASP-17b is an exoplanet in the constellation Scorpius that is orbiting the star WASP-17. Its discovery was announced on 11 August 2009. It is the first planet discovered to have a retrograde orbit, meaning it orbits in a direction counter to t ...

was announced, believed to be the first planet ever discovered to orbit in the opposite direction to the spin of its star, WASP-17.

Discoveries and follow-up observations

* WASP-9b was determined to be a false positive after its initial public announcement as a planet, and the identifier has not been subsequently reassigned to a real planetary system.

1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 b

The discovery of the J1407 system and its unusual

eclipses An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...

were first reported by a team led by

University of Rochester The University of Rochester (U of R, UR, or U of Rochester) is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York. The university grants Undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate degrees, including Doctorate, do ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

Eric Mamajek in 2012. The existence and parameters of the ring system around the substellar companion J1407b were deduced from the observation of a very long and complex eclipse of the previously anonymous star J1407 during a 56-day period during April and May 2007. The low-mass companion J1407b has been referred to as a " Saturn on steroids" or " Super Saturn"Gigantic ring system around J1407b much larger, heavier than Saturn's
on ''University of Rochester'' website. due to its massive system of circumplanetary rings with a radius of approximately 90 million km (0.6 AU). The orbital period of the ringed companion J1407b is estimated to be around a decade (constrained to 3.5 to 13.8 years), and its most probable mass is approximately 13 to 26

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousandth t ...

masses, but with considerable uncertainty. The ringed body can be ruled out as being a star with mass of over 80

masses at greater than 99% confidence. The ring system has an estimated mass similar to that of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. A gap in the ring system at about 61 million km (0.4 AU) from its centre is considered to be indirect evidence of the existence of an

exomoon An exomoon or extrasolar moon is a natural satellite that orbits an exoplanet or other non-stellar extrasolar body. Exomoons are difficult to detect and confirm using current techniques, and to date there have been no confirmed exomoon detecti ...

with mass up to 0.8 Earth masses.