Citizen Scientists Just Helped Discover Nearly 8,000 New Eclipsing Binary Stars (spokesman.com) 12
"Citizen scientists have successfully located thousands of previously unknown pairs of 'eclipsing binary' stars," reports the Washington Post, citing a recent announcement from NASA.
The ongoing initiative helps space researchers hunt for "eclipsing binary" stars, a rare phenomenon in which two stars orbit one another, periodically blocking each other's light. These star pairs offer important data to astrophysicists, who consider the many measurable properties of eclipsing binaries — and the information they bear about the history of star formation and destruction — as a foundation of the field...
The citizen science project in question, the Eclipsing Binary Patrol, validates images from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. The satellite, launched in 2018, is "exceptionally capable at detecting varying stars," the researchers write in a preprint paper describing the initiative. The researchers used machine learning to identify about 1.2 million potential eclipsing star pairs. Citizen scientists then validated a subset of about 60,000... manually inspecting hundreds of thousands of images of eclipse-like events and weeding out actual binaries from images that tricked the algorithm. "Thankfully," the researchers write, "to the rescue come volunteers from all walks of life that boost the capacity of bandwidth-limited professional astronomers many-fold and help tackle the ever-increasing volume of publicly available astronomical data."
Universe Today describes how they limited the dataset to only stars with a magnitude brighter than 15, then used a Python tool to generate a massive dataset of millions of light curves... The outcome of all the work resulted in the identification of 10,001 eclipsing binary systems. 7,936 of them are new to science, while the other 2,065 were previously known, but the study provided updated, more accurate, parameters for their periods, as TESS' dataset provided better insight. There were also some particularly interesting systems that could hold new discoveries, including several that had variable eclipse timings, and plenty that might have a third star, and some that show a significant dynamic between the star being orbited and the one doing the orbiting.
All of those systems await further research, but there's another, unspoken factor at play in this data — exoplanets. TESS was originally designed as an exoplanet hunter, and this kind of large scale AI/human collaboration of lightcurve analysis is exactly the kind of work that could potentially produce even more accurate exoplanet catalogues, as evidenced by some of the work already done in this paper. That seems to be the next step for this dataset, with Dr. Kostov telling an interviewer "I can't wait to search them for exoplanets!" Given the data has already been collected, and the team has already been assembled, it's very likely he'll get his chance soon.
The citizen science project in question, the Eclipsing Binary Patrol, validates images from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. The satellite, launched in 2018, is "exceptionally capable at detecting varying stars," the researchers write in a preprint paper describing the initiative. The researchers used machine learning to identify about 1.2 million potential eclipsing star pairs. Citizen scientists then validated a subset of about 60,000... manually inspecting hundreds of thousands of images of eclipse-like events and weeding out actual binaries from images that tricked the algorithm. "Thankfully," the researchers write, "to the rescue come volunteers from all walks of life that boost the capacity of bandwidth-limited professional astronomers many-fold and help tackle the ever-increasing volume of publicly available astronomical data."
Universe Today describes how they limited the dataset to only stars with a magnitude brighter than 15, then used a Python tool to generate a massive dataset of millions of light curves... The outcome of all the work resulted in the identification of 10,001 eclipsing binary systems. 7,936 of them are new to science, while the other 2,065 were previously known, but the study provided updated, more accurate, parameters for their periods, as TESS' dataset provided better insight. There were also some particularly interesting systems that could hold new discoveries, including several that had variable eclipse timings, and plenty that might have a third star, and some that show a significant dynamic between the star being orbited and the one doing the orbiting.
All of those systems await further research, but there's another, unspoken factor at play in this data — exoplanets. TESS was originally designed as an exoplanet hunter, and this kind of large scale AI/human collaboration of lightcurve analysis is exactly the kind of work that could potentially produce even more accurate exoplanet catalogues, as evidenced by some of the work already done in this paper. That seems to be the next step for this dataset, with Dr. Kostov telling an interviewer "I can't wait to search them for exoplanets!" Given the data has already been collected, and the team has already been assembled, it's very likely he'll get his chance soon.
A "Citizen Scientists" model may work elsewhere (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder whether citizen meteorologists might be able to pick up the slack created by all the DOGE layoffs and restore US weather forecasting to previous competency. Perhaps another incident like the deadly flash flood incident in Texas could be avoided.
Re: A "Citizen Scientists" model may work elsewher (Score:2)
Sure, it could be done. We could all volunteer to maintain roads and bridges too. Grab those shovels comrades!
If only we had some way to collectively pay for professionals to perform services for the common wealth. Not everyone would want to pay of course, so we'd need to have some sort of rules and penalties for those who try to avoid paying their fair share. I've got it: we can send them to Mar-A-Lago!
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Love it! Notice how quickly the far right trolls modded me down to zero. -1 incoming quickly, I expect.
Re: A "Citizen Scientists" model may work elsewhe (Score:2)
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It must be difficult for those interested in cosmic bodies to deal with plasma. It's not solid, liquid or gas, but something...else.
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Re: A "Citizen Scientists" model may work elsewhe (Score:2)
We could all volunteer to maintain roads and bridges too. Grab those shovels comrades!
Just like Wanksy.
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If what you say is true, it's shocking that Texas hadn't already stepped up to pay a private weather forecasting company to let them know dangerous conditions are coming. Perhaps such a company could work with the non-grid power producers who have done such a wonderful job down there in Crony Capitalist Utopia.
Will Rubin Observatory images (Score:2)
reveal a lot more?
https://rubinobservatory.org/g... [rubinobservatory.org]
Re: Will Rubin Observatory images (Score:2)
Probably. But the post processing work will still have to be done. And now there's lots more to do.
At some point, we may be able to resolve features of the crystal spheres themselves. And put all this heliocentric nonsense to bed.
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At some point, we may be able to resolve features of the crystal spheres themselves. And put all this heliocentric nonsense to bed.
It's turtles all the way down.