Real Science Online. Planet Hunters. Our Challenge NASA's Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets.
The Kepler team's computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition. This is a gamble, a bet if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines just occasionally. It may be that no new planets are found or that computers have the job down to a fine art. And yet, it's just possible that you might be the first to know that a star somewhere out there in the Milky Way has a companion, just as our Sun does.