Scientists Search for New People to Explore Planets

The space news that comes your way almost every day or the science-fiction movies you love to watch may have made you dream of finding your own planet and making a journey beyond Earth, although it is far from reality. While we have to poke our pockets even to change cities, this journey is closer to the distance, but you may be able to find planets.

Scientists are looking for new people to explore extraterrestrial planets for the NASA-funded Planet Hunters TESS project. In addition, there are no conditions required, such as experience, a crony-sergeant relationship, or graduation. Two things you need to have in order to discover new planets: a keen eye and patience.

Computer programs miss some planets:

As part of the study, images collected by the Next Generation Transit Observing NGTS telescopes at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile will be reviewed. Scientist and NGTS leader astrophysicist Peter Wheatley from the University of Warwick in England stated that it is exciting to include new people in researching planets around other stars, and that computer programs miss some planets.

To be included in the project, you can go to the Planet Hunters NGST page and apply without any fees and without getting stuck in the process. Commenting on the project involving thousands of people, Wheatley said: “These will be the most unusual signals and possibly some of the most interesting planets. Humans are still smarter than machines and I can’t wait to see what our volunteers come up with.”

“So how do we find out if the dots you see mean a planet?” if you say:

Cameras looking at a star in space analyze this image by taking a frame every 10 seconds. In the graphic above shown to us, we see the change in the brightness level taken from the star over time in the images obtained from the star that the cameras focused on.

The graphics that draw the ‘U’ shape at the bottom very clearly indicate that a celestial body is passing in front of a star. On the other hand, the length of this ‘U’ shape towards the bottom varies according to the size of the star and celestial body.

But we don’t need to know all these technical details in what we’re going to look at in the chart. Scientists just want to know what we see on the chart. Options presented to us are as follows:

• A U-shaped or box-shaped bottom in the middle: A ‘U’ or box-shaped pit in the middle.
• A V-shaped dip in the middle: A V-shaped pit in the middle.
• No significant dip in the middle: There is no significant dip in the middle.
• Stellar Variability: Stellar variability (dots lined up in a heartbeat)
• A large data gap near the middle: (if part of the chart is blank)

Your answers are being examined and who knows, maybe you are helping the discovery of another planet.