{"id":8846,"date":"2014-09-19T15:20:30","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T19:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=8846"},"modified":"2014-09-19T15:20:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T19:20:30","slug":"citizens-science-planet-hunters-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=8846","title":{"rendered":"Citizens science: Planet Hunters 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the revived Kepler<\/a>\u00a0space observatory once again looking<\/a>\u00a0for planets orbiting other stars, the citizens science program\u00a0Planet Hunters<\/a>\u00a0is graduating to Planet Hunters 2.0<\/em>:\u00a0A Brand New Planet Hunters\u00a0–\u00a0Planet Hunters<\/a><\/p>\n

On December 16, 2010<\/a>, the Zooniverse<\/a> launched Planet Hunters <\/a>to enlist the public\u2019s help to search for extrasolar planets (exoplanets) in the data from NASA\u2019s Kepler spacecraft. Back then we didn\u2019t know what we would find. It may have been the case that no new planets were discovered and that computers had the job down to a fine art. The project was a gamble on the ability of human pattern recognition to beat machines just occasionally and spot the telltale dip in a star\u2019s brightness due to a transiting planet that was missed by automated routines looking for repeating patterns.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nearly four years later, Planet Hunters has become a success beyond anyone\u2019s expectation. To date 8 published scientific papers<\/a> have resulted from the efforts of nearly 300,000 volunteers worldwide. Planet Hunters has discovered 9 planet candidate co-discoveries with the Kepler effort, over 30 unknown planet candidates not previously identified by the Kepler team, a confirmed transiting circumbinary planet in a quadruple star system\u00a0 (PH1b), a confirmed Jupiter-sized planet in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star (PH2b), and identified the 7th planet candidate of a 7 planet star system.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today in collaboration with JPL\u2019s PlanetQuest,<\/a> the Planet Hunters science team and the Zooniverse are proud to announce the launch of Planet Hunters version 2.0. We\u2019ve taken your feedback and the lessons learned over the past 3.5 years to build a fast new interface that we think will take the project to the next stage. Using the Zooniverse\u2019s latest technology, Planet Hunters 2.0 is built specifically with the next generation of transiting exoplanet surveys in mind, including the new K2 mission, which repurposes the Kepler spacecraft.<\/em><\/p>\n

Kepler had been monitoring ~170,000 stars for the signatures of transiting exoplanets over the past 4 years in the Kepler field located in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. The new-two wheel Kepler mission dubbed \u2018K2<\/a>\u2018 will have Kepler observing brand new sets of 10,000-20,000 stars every 75 days. These stars are different from the sources that Kepler had been monitoring in the past. Your eyes will be one of the first to gaze upon these observations. Most of the K2 target stars will have never before been searched for planets, providing a new opportunity to find distant worlds. K2 observations will be made available by NASA and the Kepler team to the entire astronomical community and the public shortly after being transmitted to Earth and processed. We aim to get them on Planet Hunters 2.0 as fast as we can.<\/em><\/p>\n

Continue…<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

See also<\/p>\n