Feb 17, 2012
— read in fullCould you be a planet-hunter?
Jan 17, 2012
Help to discover new planets hundreds of light years away using your web browser.
The website Planet Hunters has teamed with the BBC's Stargazing Live to try to sort through data about 500,000 stars by Wednesday - and they need your help to do it.
Planet Hunters uses information about the brightness of stars to try and spot planets. When a planet moves between a star and the telescope, it becomes slightly dimmer. But the change is difficult for a computer to spot, so volunteer 'citizen scientists' are being asked to help.
Anyone can sign up, and an interactive tutorial guides you through the process before you're unleashed on the real data. If you're the first to spot a new planet, you could even be listed as a co-author of the scientific paper announcing the discovery. And there's no need to worry that you might make a mistake - everyone's results are checked against each other to spot errors.
And if searching for planets isn't your thing, the people behind Planet Hunters run lots of other projects, including transcribing ancient Greek writing and working out what whales are saying.
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