In October 2025 a BRIEF student research team made observations at Mount Wilson Observatory using its famous 100” Hooker telescope where much of astrophysics began. The pilot project’s aim was to determine if that telescope could be brought back into scientific service for high precision astrometry such as for today’s exoplanet programs like TESS. The pilot project results were published and presented at the 2026 Society for Astronomical Sciences (SAS) Symposium.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) identifies candidate exoplanet systems for James Webb (JWST) to observe to analyze their atmospheres. TESS Subgroup 3 (SG3) is a step in filtering the potential exoplanets TESS identifies down to only the best targets for JWST ‘s expensive time. SG3 uses large telescopes (4 to 8m aperture) with adaptive optics or speckle interferometry to identify close companion stars to potential exoplanet target stars. The light from a close companion can contaminate the measured light dip from the exoplanet transit of the target star. A contaminated transit measurement can send JWST to a target of less value to its mission to find exoplanets with conditions suitable to life.
Despite rain delays and bad seeing conditions, the results suggested a second set of observations were warranted. The team along with new students from BEAR made those observations in August 2026 and are reducing the data now.