SPS Seminar - Planet Hunters TESS: people-powered exoplanet discoveries in TESS data

When: Thursday 1 December at 14.00

Where:  Microsoft Teams – Robert Hooke/Online

Speaker:  Nora Eisner – Flatiron Institute Centre for Computational Astrophysics

Hosted by: Hugh Dickinson

Abstract:

Since the first unambiguous discovery of an exoplanet in 1995, over 4,000 more have been confirmed, and studies of their characteristics have unveiled an extremely wide range of planetary properties in terms of their mass, size, system architecture and orbital periods. While dedicated planet detection algorithms are able to identify the vast majority of planets in space based photometric surveys, they miss certain types of planets that are key to our understanding of how these systems form and evolve. I will discuss how we can harness the power of citizen science, and in particular Planet Hunters TESS (PHT), to find these more elusive planets with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers. I will present the findings from the first two and a half years of the PHT, including both planets and stellar systems, and show that human classification can play an important role in a world that is becoming increasingly automated.