Posted on by Laurence Tognetti

A Tiny Telescope is Revealing “Hot Jupiter” Secrets

CUTE spacecraft and an artist's impression of a hot Jupiter. (Credit: NASA/JPL, University of Colorado)
CUTE spacecraft and an artist's impression of a hot Jupiter. (Credit: NASA/JPL, University of Colorado)

A recent study presented this week at the 2023 meeting of the American Geophysical Union discusses observations of “hot Jupiters” from the NASA-funded CubeSat mission known as the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE). Unlike most exoplanet-hunting telescopes, whose sizes are comparable to a small school bus, CUTE measures 36 centimeters (14 inches) in length, equivalent to the size of a cereal box. These findings come after members of the team, which consists of undergraduate and graduate students, published an overview paper about CUTE in The Astronomical Journal in January 2023 and results from CUTE observing WASP-189b in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in August 2023.

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Posted on by Scott Alan Johnston

A Tiny, Inexpensive Satellite Will be Studying the Atmospheres of hot Jupiters

The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (aptly nicknamed CUTE) is a new, NASA-funded mission that aims to study the atmospheres of massive, superheated exoplanets – known as hot Jupiters – around distant stars. The miniaturized satellite, built by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder, is set to launch this Monday, September 27th on an Atlas V rocket.

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