NASA needs your help. The next time you settle in for a Netflix binge, you might instead consider joining the newly expanded Exoplanet Watch. It gives you access to the data and tools used by NASA scientists to hunt exoplanets. It’s an involved project that requires a little bit of homework, but you could end up listed as a co-author in a NASA scientific publication.
Why does NASA even need regular folks to learn the ins and outs of exoplanet hunting? It’s just not that easy to detect exoplanets. After decades of searching, scientists have confirmed more than 5,000 planets outside our solar system. That may sound like a lot, but the universe, even our little corner of it, is incredibly vast. You can’t just point a telescope at a random star and spy on a planet — most exoplanet detections rely on transit photometry. That’s what you’ll learn about if you become part of the Exoplanet Watch network.
When an alien solar system is aligned just right, we can see a dip in brightness when its planets pass in front of the star. NASA’s dearly departed Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have gathered mountains of stellar light curves, but it takes time and effort to tease out the legitimate exoplanet signatures. Scientists have found some success using AI to search through light curve data, but human intuition is still the best way. You just need a lot of humans.
Exoplanet Watch launched in 2018, but it was limited to a small number of participants. Now, the program is open to all interested parties. If you already have a telescope of your own, great! NASA will tell you where to point it, and you can gather data on potential exoplanets. If not, you can use NASA’s data checkout system to download observations from NASA’s network of telescopes. You’ll use NASA’s free EXOTIC software to generate transiting exoplanet light curves and upload your data to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) Exoplanet Database.
With the James Webb Space Telescope now online and doing science, there’s no better time to get involved in the search for alien worlds. Webb is powerful enough to gather data on distant exoplanets, even characterizing their atmospheres. Just think — a planet you help discover could be analyzed by the JWST, and there’s no telling what it’ll find.
Now read:
- James Webb Space Telescope Confirms Its First Exoplanet
- Three Kepler Exoplanets May Actually Be Tiny Stars
- Scientists Detect Isotopes on Exoplanet for the First Time
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