Ever dreamed of hunting for new planets? Now's your chance. The Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) team, experts in exoplanet detection, needs your help analyzing vast datasets from their global telescope network. Your task: verify transit signals flagged by algorithms.
Transit photometry is a proven method for spotting exoplanets. By monitoring light curves from distant stars, astronomers detect periodic dips in brightness—often signs of planets passing in front of their host stars from our vantage point. These dips are subtle, lasting fixed intervals.
Challenges abound: stellar activity like sunspots, short-term variability, and Earth's atmospheric interference can mimic transits. Ground-based NGTS telescopes face these hurdles, unlike space-based ones.
The team's software flags promising signals, but false positives are common. With overwhelming data volumes, NGTS partners with Zooniverse, the leading citizen science platform, to crowdsource verification from volunteers like you.
Visit the NGTS project on Zooniverse for guided classification. New users get a tutorial on light curve types: data gaps, noisy curves, or stellar variability. Once briefed, classify away!
Stuck? The "Need help with this task" guide offers real examples of planetary transits versus imposters in NGTS data.
