Planet Hunters: the first two planet candidates identified by the public using the Kepler public archive data

Creators: Fischer, Debra A.; Crepp, Justin; Morton, Tim; Howard, Andrew

Abstract

Planet Hunters is a new citizen science project designed to engage the public in an exoplanet search using NASA Kepler public release data. In the first month after launch, users identified two new planet candidates which survived our checks for false positives. The follow-up effort included analysis of Keck HIRES spectra of the host stars, analysis of pixel centroid offsets in the Kepler data and adaptive optics imaging at Keck using NIRC2. Spectral synthesis modelling coupled with stellar evolutionary models yields a stellar density distribution, which is used to model the transit orbit. The orbital periods of the planet candidates are 9.8844 ± 0.0087 d (KIC 10905746) and 49.7696 ± 0.000 39 d (KIC 6185331), and the modelled planet radii are 2.65 and 8.05 R_⊕. The involvement of citizen scientists as part of Planet Hunters is therefore shown to be a valuable and reliable tool in exoplanet detection.

Additional Information

© 2011 The Authors. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS. Accepted 2011 September 30. Received 2011 September 30; in original form 2011 July 13. Article first published online: 28 Nov 2011. This publication has been made possible by the participation of more than 40 000 volunteers in the Planet Hunters project. Their contributions are individually acknowledged at http://www.planethunters.org/authors. The data presented in this paper are the result of the efforts of the Planet Hunters volunteers, without whom this work would not have been possible. The following list of people flagged transit events for the light curves discussed in this paper: Juan Camilo Arango Alvarez, Mary-Helen Armour, Ferdinand de Antoni, Frank Barnet, Carolyn Bol, Les Bruffell, Dr. David M. Bundy, Troy Campbell, Elisabeth Chaghafi, Amirouche Chahour, Arunangshu Chakrabarty, Mathias Chapuis, Fabrice Cordary, Daniel, ClmentDoyen, Graham Dungworth, Michael Richard Eaton, David Evans, Raymond Ashley Evans, Evgeniy, Enrique Ferreyra, Marc Fiedler, Dave Fischer, Fin J. R. FitzPatrick, Dr Ed Foley, Lorenzo Fortunato, Sebastian Frehmel, Robert Gary Gagliano, Fabio Cesar Gozzo, Howard Hallmark, Dave Henderson, Brent Hugh, Inizan, irishcoffee, Thomas Lee Jacobs, Marta Kału˙zna, Bill Kandiliotis, Rafal Kurianowicz, Lukasz Kurzysz, Piotr Laczny, David M. Lindberg, Janet Lomas, Luis Miguel Moreira Calado Lopes, Mihael Lujanac, Lukasz, Cssia Solange Lyra, Jacek M., Riccardo Marzi, Karen McAuley, Tomasz Miller, Cedric MOULIS, Adrian Nicolae,Njaal, Michael W. Novak, Osciboj, Kai Pietarinen, Anna Podjaska,Marc A. Powell (Omeganon), Gerry A. Prentice, John M. Rasor, René-Pierre BUIGUES, Andres Eloy Martinez Rojas, Rouz, Andrey Sapronov, Matt Schickele, Terrance B. Schmidt, David Smith, Paulina Sowick, Lubomír Śtiak, Charles H. Tidwell, III, tuckdydes, v5anw, Joop Vanderheiden, VIATG, vovcik91, Sbastien Wertz, Bohdan Widla, Steven C. Wooding, Charles Yule. DAF acknowledges funding support from Yale University and support from the NASA Supplemental Outreach Award, 10- OUTRCH.210-0001. DAF thanks the Yale Keck TAC for telescope time used to obtain data for this paper. MES is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-100325. Support for the work of KS was provided by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship grant number PF9- 00069, issued by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, which is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for and on behalf of NASA under contract NAS8-03060. The Zooniverse is supported by The Leverhulme Trust. We gratefully acknowledge the dedication and achievements of Kepler Science Team and all those who contributed to the success of the mission. We acknowledge use of public release data served by the NASA/IPAC/NExScI Star and Exoplanet Database, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We particularly thank the organizers (Charles Beichman, Dawn Gelino and Carolyn Brinkman) and lecturers (David Ciardi, Stephen Kane and Kaspar von Braun) at the 2010 July Sagan Summer Workshop for providing information and guidance that led to the inspiration for the Planet Hunters site. The Kepler public release data is primarily hosted by the Multimission Archive (MAST) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G. This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.

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