Success for Planet Hunters

September 29, 2011 By Aminda

Only a couple weeks after citizen scientists solve an AIDS molecular challenge on Foldit, volunteers for Planet Hunters may have identified two new exoplanets. In the past decade, more than 500 such exoplanets have been identified using techniques including Doppler observation.

The Planet Hunters project has been analyzing data from the Kepler Space Telescope; volunteers look for transit signals in the data, which cause the light from the star to dim periodically. The new planet candidates were flagged only two months after the data were released to the public in December, 2010. Currently known as KIC 10905746 and KIC 6185331, they have radii of 2.32 and 8.0, respectively.

The appeal of volunteering to sift through monotonous datasets is somewhat baffling at first. However, project leaders know that the Discussion Board is a critical component of the project. This is where the public has the opportunity to interact with the science team and with other experienced users. Together they create collections of similar findings and provide advice for new users. The integration of discussion into the workflow has been successful in encouraging participation; more than 60% of registered Planet Hunters participants visit “Talk,” and more than 35% make comments. Complete results of the findings have been published and made publicly available online.  

Projects like this have shown that getting observations from regular contributors to the work is as reliable as putting scientists to work. Planet Hunters is part of the citizen scientist site Zooniverse, which has continued to expand the number of projects on their website, asking participants to work on harder problems. In addition to the Planet Hunters,  volunteers can help to transcribe ancient Egyptian papyri, keep a watch out for solar storms, and even help measure the Milky Way.


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