Penn Telescope Minerva-Red Aids in the Search for Earth-Like Planets

With the dedication of the new telescope Minerva-Red, Penn Arts and Sciences astronomers have joined the Minerva Project, designed to discover planets orbiting stars other than the sun. The “Red” in the name is what sets Minerva-Red apart from the other telescopes in the project; it is designed to look for planets around low-mass stars, light from which is mostly in the infrared part of the spectrum. Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Cullen Blake and graduate student David Sliski join astronomers from Harvard University, the University of New South Wales, the University of Montana, the Smithsonian Institution, and Pennsylvania State University to operate the five robotic telescopes in the Minerva Project.

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