A Danbury High School Senior is being credited with discovering a habitable planet.  Alton Spencer is working with NASA's planet-hunting mission, TESS, as a researcher.  He and others pointed out an error that initially miscategorized a star as much hotter, which led astronomers to think that the planets orbiting it would be too close and hot to support life. 

Astronomers confirmed their discovery using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope infrared capabilities with follow-up observations. 

CNN reports that the exoplanet the size of Earth is part of a multi-planet system orbiting a cool M-dwarf star about 100 light-years from Earth.  The star is only about 40% of the sun's mass and size, with half of the surface temperature.  The planet is known as TOI 700 d, one of three orbiting the star.  NASA says it's at just the right distance to support liquid water on the surface in the star's habitable zone.  

The planet is thought to be tidally locked, meaning one side is always in daylight.  In a NASA feature from April 2018, Spencer said he doesn't feel like there’s an age restriction when it comes to making great discoveries. He added that citizen science is a way for people in middle or high school to actually make contributions to science despite not being in college or having science careers yet.