The space agency of the POT has opened its exoplanet exploration program to a wider audience, with the aim of finding these stars through collective data analysis more quickly and efficiently.
Since it is a fact that we are facing a new era in the history of space exploration and the study of the stars. All to a large extent thanks to the existence and launch of tools such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
During 2022 we witnessed how the discovery and deep analysis of new stars skyrocketed in an impressive way. Including a wide range of exoplanets with qualities of all kinds.
Stars that resemble the Earth to some others where even imagining their conditions of existence is difficult.
All thanks to James Webb and new data analysis technology that is much less complex and makes it possible to find such stars faster.
And now anyone can join this search.
NASA opens its exoplanet search program to the public
A publication recent in the official blog of the space agency reveals to us that now his program exoplanetwatch Seeks citizen scientists and hobbyist observers to help track planets outside of our solar system, also known as exoplanets.
The most interesting point here is that the participants can use their own telescopes for civilian use to search for exoplanets or even the opportunity to study data from other more powerful telescopes using a computer or even a smartphone:
“With Exoplanet Watch you can learn to observe exoplanets and do data analysis using software that real NASA scientists use. We are excited to show more people how exoplanet science is really done.”
This is what Rob Zellem, the creator of Exoplanet Watch and astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) points out in the publication announcing the massive opening of the program.
The Exoplanet Watch project actually started in the year of 2018 under the initiative of NASA’s Universe of Learning.
However, for years there were somewhat restrictive limits on the number of people who could review data from other telescopes and did not support using these devices at home as a source of validation.
Now Exoplanet Watch is renewed and integrates into its protocol the use of the transit method, a technique that consists of looking for a slight dimming of the host star when the planet passes in front of it.
Such a time between transits reveals how long it takes an exoplanet to orbit its parent star, and the more transits that are measured, the more precisely the length of the orbit is known.
In this new stage, NASA will teach participants to apply this method and analyze the data collected by the agency in order to discover new exoplanets.