Are you bored? Go find a planet!

[GIGObuster]

Planet Hunters TESS | Zooniverse - People-powered research

The Kepler team has been developing computer algorithms to analyze light curve data because it is not possible for them to visually inspect every light curve. While we expect computer programs to robustly identify things that they are trained to find, we are betting that there will be a number of surprises in the data that the computer algorithms will miss.

The human brain is particularly good at discerning patterns or aberrations and experiments have shown that when many people work together, the collective wisdom of the crowds can be better than an expert. Planet Hunters is an online experiment that taps into the power of human pattern recognition. Participants are partners with our science team, who will analyze group assessments, obtain follow up observations at the telescope to understand the new classification schemes for different families of light curves, identify oddities, and verify transit signals.

Examples of candidates found with this effort are already here:

Planet Hunters TESS | Zooniverse - People-powered research

Good times, good times.

[Encinitas]

I miss Pluto.

[Boyo_Jim]

So I joined up, and one of the first objects I looked at is APH22100435. I don’t yet know if other folks here can look this up, but it’s a very regular sine wave that trends downward. I don’t even know yet it I’ll be able to go back and find it again.

I wonder if the wave length is too long for the dips to be considered as transits. If not, what might they be? And why would the light be getting dimmer at a fairly regular rate over the course of a month?

[Alka_Seltzer]

@Boyo_Jim

I wonder if the wave length is too long for the dips to be considered as transits. If not, what might they be? And why would the light be getting dimmer at a fairly regular rate over the course of a month?

Variable star maybe?

[Boyo_Jim]

I have looked at about 150 stars so far. Among them were two with deliberately false data. Once I made assessed them a message appeared saying that false data indicating a planet was transiting the sun with such and such a frequency was inserted, and these transit periods were then marked on the screen. It asked whether I marked them, but doesn’t actually have a way for me to answer. It’s just done to demonstrate what kind of data they’re looking for and as a test of whether you are able to see the patterns that would appear.

The good news is that in both cases, I had in fact marked the sun as having possible transit events, but my markings of when and how many was incomplete. So at least I’m reassured I’m not setting their project back rather than ahead.

[Boyo_Jim]

Just wanted to pop this up to say thanks – I think – to GIGObuster for steering me to this. It’s become a strange obsession with me. I’ve looked at more than 4,000 stars for planetary transitions so far (which is about 3% of its database).