Astronomers have been stuck with this nagging question ever since a team of citizen scientists from
the Planet Hunters project first detected a series of very strange dips in the star's brightness back in 2011, while analysing data that had been gathered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft.
The Planet Hunters project has entered its next phase.
The Kepler team's computers are sifting through the data, but
the Planet Hunters project is betting that there will be planets that can only be found via the human ability for pattern recognition.
Perplexed, these citizen scientists notified Boyajian, a member of the team overseeing
the Planet Hunters project.
Meanwhile, the citizen science
Planet Hunters project has notched a planet on its belt: PH1b.
More than 300,000 amateur astronomers have participated in
the Planet Hunters project.
Not exact matches
Members of the
Planet Hunters citizen science project were the first to notice it when they scoured Kepler's data for transiting worlds overlooked by professional astronomers» automated planet - hunting algor
Planet Hunters citizen science
project were the first to notice it when they scoured Kepler's data for transiting worlds overlooked by professional astronomers» automated
planet - hunting algor
planet - hunting algorithms.
A previous NASA
project, called the Keck Interferometer, had a similar task of seeking out this dust, finding good news for
planet hunters: The stars they observed didn't seem to be all that dusty on average.
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii — A new study from the Keck Interferometer, a former NASA
project that combined the power of the twin W. M. Keck Observatory telescopes atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has brought exciting news to
planet hunters.
With
Planet Hunters (http://www.planethunters.org), one of the many Zooniverse citizen science
projects, we enlist the general public to inspect the publicly released Kepler data via the World Wide Web.
You can learn more the science and discoveries coming from the
project on the
Planet Hunters» blog.
About Blog This is the blog for the online citizen science
project Planet Hunters.
Their
project include Galaxy Zoo, Old Weather,
Planet Hunters, Snapshot Serengeti & more.