Exoplanet Watch Overview

What is Exoplanet Watch?

Stay in Touch

Connect with us; we'd love to hear from you!

Earth-shaped word cloud made up of the many languages in which NASA Citizen Science projects are available, including Arabic, Bengali, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Nepali, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Thai, Urdu, and Vietnamese. In the center of the word cloud, the words Do NASA Science are prominent.

Community

Exoplanet Watch promotes a welcoming community — anyone can participate!

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Glossary

Common words and phrases you might run across when participating in Exoplanet Watch.

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Background Information

An introduction to exoplanets and how we study them.

Man standing next to a large red telescope on an outdoor observatory platform at sunset.

Overview | Stay in Touch | Community | Glossary | Background Information | Team

Overview

Who we are: A NASA citizen science project, sponsored by NASA's Universe of Learning, we help anyone explore exoplanets at any level, from students to professionals. As a participant, you can gather and analyze real exoplanet data, contribute your results to a NASA database, and even get recognition for your work in scientific publications!
No telescope? No problem! Anyone in the world can check out free data directly to your inbox, and/or use remote robotic telescopes.
Completely new to exoplanets? See our Background Information for some simple, but foundational, science explanations. Still have questions? Just ask!

Fast Facts

What is an exoplanet?

An exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system. Most exoplanets orbit other stars. Exoplanets can pass in front of, or "transit," the stars they orbit. And now we know that even small backyard telescopes can detect those transits!

In the upper left quadrant of a vertical image, against a black background, a large orange-yellow star is shown with tendrils of gas – a stellar flare – streaming out from the star at about the 4 o'clock position. The flare is streaming toward a bluish planet, smaller than the star, at the center right of the image; streaks of grayish white streaming from the planet toward the lower right indicate dissipation of the planet's atmosphere in response to the flare. A second planet, much smaller because farther away, can be seen to the right of the star and above the foreground planet.

Artist's concept of the star HIP 67522 with a flare erupting toward an orbiting planet, HIP 67522 b. A second planet, HIP 67522 c, is shown in the background.

Janine Fohlmeister

By studying exoplanets, you can help answer NASA's three big science questions about the universe:

How does the universe work?
How did we get here?
Are we alone?

Become a Watcher! Start your astronomical journey by joining our Slack to meet other Exoplanet Watchers, ask questions, troubleshoot problems, and more. Beginners are welcome! We even have a dedicated #introductions-for-beginners Slack channel.

Ready to study some exoplanets? See our How to Get Started checklist.

When you look up into the night sky, do you wonder what's out there beyond our solar system? Come help scientists learn more about the exoplanets in our galaxy!

Anyone can participate! The Watchers community teaches you everything you need to know step by step. No telescope? No problem! You can use our robotic telescopes to request data to analyze even on a mobile device.

When a planet passes directly between a star and its observer, it dims the star's light by a measurable amount.
When an exoplanet orbits in between its star and the Earth, this "micro-eclipse" blocks a small percentage of the starlight. Graphing the brightness over time, there will be a dip in the "light curve" which can oftentimes be less than 1%! Our open-source, cloud-based software, EXOTIC, takes in your raw images/data (from your telescope or ours), then "reduces" them into a light curve to find that dip.

You'll be able to upload your results into our NASA pipeline to help scientists learn more about that exoplanet system. A unique identifier makes sure you get credit for your observations whenever scientists use your data. As of March 2024, Exoplanet Watchers have studied over 400 different exoplanets, and created over 6,000 light curves.

You can play with this artist's concept of the exoplanet called HAT-P-32 b. Click and drag your mouse to move the exoplanet. Click on the "+" to see more information about the exoplanet.

NASA's Eyes on Exoplanets

With your help, Exoplanet Watch will:

Make the best use of larger telescopes — more accurately predict the next transit event for follow-up with space-based telescopes (e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope) or large ground-based telescopes
Discover new exoplanets — using transit timing variations to infer the existence of an additional exoplanet in a extrasolar system
Monitor stellar variability — changes in a star's brightness caused by spots (dark regions) and plages (bright regions) of an exoplanet's host star can be measured
Confirm new exoplanets — help confirm the existence of newly discovered exoplanets
As an Exoplanet Watch citizen scientist, you will:
Learn how science is done from beginning to end, collecting data, processing it, sharing it, and reading papers that incorporate it
Observe transiting exoplanets (if you have a telescope), or request data from other people's telescopes (if you do not) using our data checkout system
"Reduce" and analyze your data, using our free, open-source EXOTIC software, to create your own transiting exoplanet light curves
Upload your results to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) Exoplanet Database
Have your light curve included on the Exoplanet Watch's Results webpage
If your observations or light curves are used in a scientific paper, your name will be listed as a co-author on the paper, and you will get credit for participating in scientific research
Meet astronomers who study exoplanets professionally and collaborate with other citizen scientists in our bi-weekly meetings and on our Slack

Sounds great! How do I participate?

Head over to our How to Get Started page to learn more... and get started!

Meet the Team

Join our Slack!

Meet other Exoplanet Watch participants, ask questions, troubleshoot problems, get updates on our biweekly full team meetings, and more. Click on the link to sign up and/or log into our Slack.

Page Updated: November 5, 2024

Also:

Meet the Team — Join our Slack to meet other Exoplanet Watch participants, ask questions, troubleshoot problems, get updates on our biweekly full team meetings, and more. Click on the Slack logo below to sign up and/or log into our Slack.

Learn More and Get Involved

Exoplanet Watch Newsletter

Subscribe to the Exoplanet Watch newsletter, and read previous editions.

A person standing by a telescope at night, ready to observe transiting exoplanets.

Meet the Team

Join our Slack to meet other Exoplanet Watch participants, ask questions, troubleshoot problems, get updates on our biweekly full team meetings, and more.