John Paul M. Joaquin Science 01.16.2023 01:Jan AM EST

NASA Wants Your Help in Finding Exoplanets With or Without a Telescope

NASA wants your help in finding more alien worlds in space.

The space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is inviting everyone once again to participate in NASA's Exoplanet Watch project, where amateur astronauts can help NASA scientists find exoplanets with or without a telescope.

NASA's Exoplanet Watch project has been going on since 20128 under its Universe of Learning, one of NASA's Science Activation programs that lets anyone experience how science is done and discover the universe for themselves.

NASA Exoplanet Watch Invitation Details

NASA's Exoplanet Watch allows the space agency to increase the number of people looking at the stars to find exoplanets, planets not included in our solar system. However, this was not always the case, according to Space.com.

The project initially had limits in 2018 on how many people could help through the data NASA's telescopes collect. With the project's opening to the public, however, anyone can download these data to their device or access it via the cloud, and then use a custom data analysis tool NASA created to assess them.

Using this tool, especially for those with no background in astronomy, can be difficult. Thankfully, NASA provided a set of instructive tutorials on the project's official website for people to look into to learn how to properly use it.

Rob Zellem, the project's creator and an astrophysicist at NASA's JPL, said that people who would participate in his Exoplanet Watch project could learn how to observe exoplanets and do data analysis using the custom data analysis tool NASA created. They can also learn how to spot exoplanets in the process.

How to Help NASA Find Exoplanets

Those with a telescope can look for exoplanets by focusing on a star and using the transit method to check if a planet is orbiting it. To do so, an amateur astronomer has to look for a slight dimming of the star in question as the planet passes in front many times to determine if a planet is orbiting it.

This method is the most successful in NASA's hunt for exoplanets, with the space agency finding 3,941 planets through this method. Another method to consider is the Wobble method, wherein astronomers look for a star's "wobbling" in space, which changes the color of the light they observe.

This method helps NASA find 1,023 planets, making it one of the most popular methods scientists use in spotting exoplanets.

Those without a telescope can still help NASA find exoplanets by using the data the space agency's telescopes collected to spot the ones astronomers may have overlooked.

This data consists of 10 years of exoplanet observations collected by a small ground-based telescope south of Tucson, Arizona. People using the data the telescopes provided can use the transit method to spot exoplanets as they orbit around their host star.

They can also look for variations in the apparent brightness of stars, such as outbursts of light, and star pots (dark spots on a star's surface) to spot exoplanets.