Gáspár Bakos' major contribution to the astronomical sciences is the creation of HATnet, which is short for Hungarian-made Automated Telescope. This system, as described in the previous link, originated to track certain bright variable objects (which includes both stars and planets, among others) in the northern hemisphere's sky, without any direct assistance necessary from humans.
Bakos developed the prototype of the telescopes currently in use while an undergraduate student in Hungary. Interestingly, it was home-made; it was built using camera components.
Through this telescope network, which now includes locations in Israel, Hawaii and Arizona, an entirely new class of planet was detected in 2006.
So what's the big deal about the planets? For the next three days, I'll try to cover the basics of astronomy, the planet his network discovered, as well as the difficulty involved with detecting extrasolar planets.
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HATnet sounds like an amazing contribution to the scientific world. I didn't know he had done that and I took an astronomy class that should have at least mentioned it. Nice job.
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