The successful search for new planets can do not only professional scientists, but also ordinary users of the Network. This was proved by visitors to the online forum Zooniverse, which helped the students-the students of NASA to detect exoplanets K2-288Bb. They were able to prove the existence of the planet using data from the telescope “Kepler” has officially completed work on 30 November due to lack of fuel. The researchers there are many reasons to assume that the detected object has liquid water and, consequently, life.
K2 exoplanet-288Bb located at a distance of 226 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Taurus. There is a system of K2-288, consisting of two red dwarf stars of different sizes that are distant from each other at a distance of 8.2 billion km. Exoplanet revolves around the smallest of them — it creates conditions where there may be water in liquid form. It is almost two times larger than the Earth, and the year it lasts just one earth month.
Student Adina Feinstein and McKenna Bristow together Intern NASA and studied the data collected by the telescope “Kepler”. Intern has discovered an exoplanet by the transit method, monitoring the moments of its passage in the red dwarf by using the information recorded by the light sensors of the telescope. They were able to fix only two of the transit, and the third was found by users of the forum Zooniverse. Of course, the data was tested and confirmed by experts of NASA.
This is a very impressive opening, given the unusual method of its discovery and pretty rare size exoplanets.
Adina Feinstein, PhD student, University of Chicago
Previously, using data from Kepler, astronomers have found at least 2600 planets, 50 of which can be the same size and temperature as Earth. Stop his work does not mean that scientists will stop looking for exoplanets. Instead of the failed device search will telescope TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). Also similar studies conducted by the Observatory Hubble, which will subsequently be replaced by a telescope, the James Webb.
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