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Online hunters detect possible exoplanets
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Amateur astronomers working with the online citizen science project Planet Hunters have discovered two potential exoplanets, according to new research.
Since launching last December, 40,000 web users from around the world have used real scientific data collected by NASA’s Kepler mission to help professional astronomers analyze the light from 150,000 stars in the hopes of discovering the Earth-like planets orbiting around them.
“This is the first time that the public has used data from a NASA space mission to detect possible planets orbiting other stars,” says Debra Fischer, professor of astronomy at Yale University who helped launch the Planet Hunters project.
Full story at Futurity.
Photo credit: Michael Marsland (top) / Yale University
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