Planet Hunters

PROJECT

Url:http://www.planethunters.org/
Start date:
End date: Still open
Infrastructure: Zooniverse

TEAM

Official team page:http://www.planethunters.org/who_we_are#Beleu
Leader: Michele Beleu
Institution: Yale Universuty
Partner institutions: Adler Planetarium, Univeristy of Oxform, Vizzuality, Zooinverse
Contact: http://www.planethunters.org/who_we_are#forum

PROJECT DEFINITION

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Subject

Natural sciences > astronomy, astrophyics (physics)

Description

Planet Hunters, the latest project from the Zooniverse, is a citizen science project. Participants help us sieve through data taken by the NASA Kepler space mission. These data consist of brightness measurements, or "light curves," taken every thirty minutes for more than 150,000 stars. Users search for possible transit events - a brief dip in brightness that occurs when a planet passes in front of the star - with the goal of discovering a planet (hence the name "Planet Hunters"). The most difficult detections for Planet Hunters and for computer-based searches will be those from planets that orbit far from their star and therefore cross the star infrequently. It may also be difficult for computer algorithms to detect planets in data that has artificial offsets (which can occur with telescope pointing errors or space craft rolls). Planet Hunter participants may be better than computers at finding signals in this type of data. Because of the outstanding pattern recognition of the human brain, we hope that participants will also establish new "families" or classifications for the light curves. We will be standing by to obtain more data at telescopes to better understand the underlying physical reason for the different classifications.

Purpose.

The Kepler team has been developing computer algorithms to analyze light curve data because it is not possible for them to visually inspect every light curve. While we expect computer programs to robustly identify things that they are trained to find, we are betting that there will be a number of surprises in the data that the computer algorithms will miss. The human brain is particularly good at discerning patterns or aberrations and experiments have shown that when many people work together, the collective wisdom of the crowds can be better than an expert. Planet Hunters is an online experiment that taps into the power of human pattern recognition. Participants are partners with our science team, who will analyze group assessments, obtain follow up observations at the telescope to understand the new classification schemes for different families of light curves, identify oddities, and verify transit signals.

Research question.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets. The Kepler team's computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition. This is a gamble, a bet if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally. It may be that no new planets are found or that computers have the job down to a fine art. And yet, it's just possible that you might be the first to know that a star somewhere out there in the Milky Way has a companion, just as our Sun does. Fancy giving it a try?

ABOUT PARTICIPANT TASKS

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Grey typology	Participation typology	Contribution type:
Computing: NO Thinking: NO Sensing: NO Gaming: NO	Crowdsourcing ☐ Distributed intelligence ☐ Participatory science ☐ Extreme citizen science ☐ Science outreach ☐	Data collection ☐ Data analysis ☐ Data interpretation ☐--------
Gaming
Genre:	Gaming elements:
Interface
Data type to manipulate:	interface enjoyment: Interface usability:	Member profiles::N/A Member profile elements:

ABOUT GUIDANCE AND FEEDBACK

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Guidance	Feedback on
Tutorial and documentation: SOMEWHAT Training sequence: SOMEWHAT Peer to peer guidance: SOMEWHAT	individual performance: Somewhat collective performance: Somewhat research progress: Somewhat

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COMMUNITY

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Tools	News & Events
Communication: Social Network: N/A	Main news site: Frequency of project news updates: N/A Type of events: Frequency of events :
Community description
Community size (volounteers based): Role: Interaction form: Has official community manager(s): N/A Has team work N/A

Other information about community:
Community led additions:

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION

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Capture d’écran 2013-11-14 à 14.29.40.png Yes [[has completion level::Medium]

http://www.planethunters.org/who we are#Beleu

http://www.planethunters.org/who we are#forum

Yes astronomy, astrophyics Natural sciences physics The Kepler team has been developing computer algorithms to analyze light curve data because it is not possible for them to visually inspect every light curve. While we expect computer programs to robustly identify things that they are trained to find, we are betting that there will be a number of surprises in the data that the computer algorithms will miss. The human brain is particularly good at discerning patterns or aberrations and experiments have shown that when many people work together, the collective wisdom of the crowds can be better than an expert. Planet Hunters is an online experiment that taps into the power of human pattern recognition. Participants are partners with our science team, who will analyze group assessments, obtain follow up observations at the telescope to understand the new classification schemes for different families of light curves, identify oddities, and verify transit signals. NASA's Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets. The Kepler team's computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition. This is a gamble, a bet if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally. It may be that no new planets are found or that computers have the job down to a fine art. And yet, it's just possible that you might be the first to know that a star somewhere out there in the Milky Way has a companion, just as our Sun does. Fancy giving it a try?

Planet Hunters

, other: Thinking: no Computing: no Sensing: no Gaming: no

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BIBLIOGRAPHY