Could You Find A Planet?
- 19th Oct 2021
- Author: Sarah Casewell
Citizen science has proved hugely popular in recent times with projects ranging from counting animals in images, to assigning tags to archival objects, to identifying variable stars or describing galaxies. These projects provide access to science and professional scientists in a way that is flexible, allowing as much or as little commitment as you want!
Citizen scientists take part for a variety of reasons, but many say while they have been interested in science for a long time, a scientific career was not for them. Citizen science allows them to contribute to a project in a way that suits them. As a scientist involved in citizen science projects, I can say that the citizen scientists I work with are hugely excited by the science, and that excitement is very infectious!
Planet Hunters
The Zooniverse platform has over 50 currently active projects, providing tasks to capture the imagination of everyone. Planet Hunters has been one of the most successful projects with over 80 scientific papers published with citizen science input.
We have recently launched Planet Hunters: NGTS, using data from the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). NGTS consists of 12 20cm telescopes located at Cerro Paranal in Chile, close to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescopes and is run by a consortium of universities including the University of Leicester, University of Warwick, University of Cambridge, Queens University Belfast, Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) in Germany, the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Universidad de Chile, the Universidad Católica del Norte, and the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
The Transit Method
NGTS is searching for Neptune sized planets around cool stars and has discovered over 20 planets to date, including the “impossible planet” NGTS-4b and a rare hot Jupiter planet orbiting a red dwarf (NGTS-1b).
NGTS uses the transit method to find planets. We observe stars for about 60 days or more, taking an image every 10 seconds looking for tiny dips indicating a planet has moved across the star. We can then use these dips to determine how big the planet is.
We Need You
NGTS has produced a wealth of data that has already been sifted by our team’s computers and we are now asking citizen scientists to have a look and see what could be hiding in there! We are asking you to look at the lightcurve of a star – a graph showing how the star’s brightness changes over time – and classify it, telling us the shape of any dip in the middle, and about any other features. As with all Zooniverse projects there is a clearly written tutorial and a “talk” function to chat with other citizen scientists on the project.
So…. We need you! Come and join in at Planet Hunters: NGTS and see if you can find a planet!
About the author: Dr Sarah Casewell is an astronomer at the University of Leicester who researches white and brown dwarf stars.
