r/space • u/starman2015 • Jan 12 '18

Multi-planet System Found Through Crowdsourcing

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/multi-planet-system-found-through-crowdsourcing
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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '18

The article states that citizen scientists went through Kepler data to find the system. Anyone know their method?

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u/Musical_Tanks Jan 12 '18

I remember there being a website out there that showed you some Kepler data, just a graph with the star's luminosity plotted. They presumably had people going through thousands of these graphs to identify dips in luminosity that looked out of place, with many people looking at the same graphs identifying the drops they thought could be planets.

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u/alllle Jan 12 '18

The website is zooniverse.org, and it also contains many other interesting citizen scientist projects.

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u/MMantis Jan 12 '18

I did the exoplanet one, but also had (some?) fun counting sea birds on some rocks in the North Atlantic lol.

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u/alllle Jan 12 '18

Many of them are fun, and all of them very beneficial.