Bored? Discover A Planet In NASA's Piles Of Space Photos From TESS

Starting this week, NASA's invited the public to look through their files. They've launched a project called Planet Patrol, and they've invited the public to go ahead and dive right in. This project is made possible by the data and images collected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, otherwise known as TESS.

Part of the project includes weeding out false positives. Part of the project involves you looking through real-deal photographs of space captured by TESS. You might be the first person in the universe to catch a mistake made by TESS – or you could be the first to identify a new planet. Maybe you'll see an incoming alien invasion – you never know!

Per Planet Patrol project leader Veselin Kostov, "Automated methods of processing TESS data sometimes fail to catch imposters that look like exoplanets," and they need you to assist in this bit of identification. "The human eye is extremely good at spotting such imposters, and we need citizen scientists to help us distinguish between the lookalikes and genuine planets."

Kostov is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Planet Patrol is a project that works with teams at the SETI institute, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, NASA, and Zooniverse! That's not necessarily a reference to The Mighty Boosh, but a collaboration of scientists, educators, and developers that work on awesome science projects online.

If you'd like to participate in PLANET PATROL, head over to Zooniverse right now. At the moment at which we're about to publish this article, the project has approximately 2,045 volunteers, 172,706 classifications, 20,318 subjects, and 536 completed subjects. They've JUST STARTED, currently rolling at 2% complete!