Web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers.
Since the online citizen science project Planet Hunters launched last December, 40,000 Web users from around the world have been helping professional astronomers analyse the light from 1,50,000 stars in the hopes of discovering Earth-like planets orbiting around them.
Users analyse real scientific data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, which has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system since its launch in 2009.
Now astronomers at Yale University have announced the discovery of the first two potential exoplanets discovered by Planet Hunters users in a study to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The candidate planets orbit their host stars with periods ranging from 10 to 50 days - much shorter than the 365 days it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun - and have radii that range in size from two-and-a-half to eight times Earth's radius.
Users found two in the first month of Planet Hunters operations using data the Kepler mission made publicly available.
The team sent the top 10 candidates found by the citizen scientists to the Kepler team, who analysed the data and determined that two of them were planet candidates.
Users analyse real scientific data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, which has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system since its launch in 2009.
Now astronomers at Yale University have announced the discovery of the first two potential exoplanets discovered by Planet Hunters users in a study to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The candidate planets orbit their host stars with periods ranging from 10 to 50 days - much shorter than the 365 days it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun - and have radii that range in size from two-and-a-half to eight times Earth's radius.
Users found two in the first month of Planet Hunters operations using data the Kepler mission made publicly available.
The team sent the top 10 candidates found by the citizen scientists to the Kepler team, who analysed the data and determined that two of them were planet candidates.
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