News & Resources

Help NASA find new worlds with Exoplanet Watch

Help NASA find new worlds with Exoplanet Watch

  • 02/22/2023
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
 
From NASA's Exoplanet Watch Team:

Exoplanet Watch is NASA's newest citizen science project, announced on January 10, 2023. Exoplanet Watch studies exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars beyond our solar system. The project is growing daily - and we are recruiting astronomers like you!

We're encouraging astronomers who have telescopes with a tracking mount and a camera to participate in the project by making your own observations of exoplanet transits. We'll show you how, when, and where to look! We'll also show you how to use our free EXOTIC (Exoplanet Timing Interpretation Code) software to make your own light curves. If you have more data than time to process it, you can contribute your own observations of transiting exoplanets so that other citizen scientists can make their own light curves. 

Exoplanet Watch participants have studied 275 different exoplanets so far, and created more than 1,500 light curves. With your help, we can expand the reach of the project. We have participants in 24 time zones already, but the more participants we have, the better. Your work will help make the timing for upcoming James Webb Space Telescope exoplanet observations more precise, freeing up valuable space telescope time for other scientists. If your observations or your light curves are used in a scientific paper, you will get credit as a co-author on the paper. When you sign up, we'll walk you through our website and how to participate in the project.

Exoplanet Watch
exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-watch

Bonus: NSN Webinar Series
Exoplanet Watch: Inviting Citizen Scientists to Observe Transiting Exoplanets
February 23, 2023
(online)

Join the Night Sky Network and Robert Zellem on Thursday, February 23 at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern to learn how to participate in the discovery of exoplanets with NASA's Exoplanet Watch citizen science  program.

Registration & Additional information:
Night Sky Network members can join live, ask questions, and get up-to-date information about the resource via the Zoom platform. Members may register in advance for this webinar on its Outreach Resource page (member login required).
Members-Only: https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-view.cfm?Doc_ID=717

Public Livestream & Recording (YouTube)
The talk will be streamed live at the YouTube link below. Please note that questions submitted via the Zoom QA feature will have priority over YouTube chat.
The recording will be available afterwards on this page and also at the same link. 
Public Youtube: https://youtube.com/live/clSbIBDHhxU

After the event, this recording will join past webinars featuring NASA speakers on the NSN's Youtube page:
https://www.youtube.com/NASANightSkyNetwork


 
Last Updated: February 7, 2023

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