First, let me point out that I am not very interested in the in-game rewards/stats for Project Discover. However I am VERY interested in the citizen science aspect of it.
First Question: I can spend 15 minutes per sample marking the easy to spot transits and likely get an “Analysis Successful”, or I can spend hours trying to pick out more difficult transits and possibly get an “Analysis Failed” result. Which of those methods is the most beneficial to the scientists working with the data?
Second Question: I’ve poured through the A Simple Exoplanets Project Discovery Guide but I would like to get a better understanding of the science behind all of this so that I can do a better job of spotting transits. Can anyone point me in the direction of resources that would be suitable for a very intelligent non-astronomer?
The kind of information I’m looking for would be along the lines of:
“An eclipsing binary tends to do (X, Y, or Z), so you want to look for transits that exhibit the properties (A, B, or C)”
“The brightness of an erupting variable tends to (increase/decrease) in the hours after an eruption, so you want to first look for transits (there/elsewhere)”
First…I do the ten each day that give double reward. The Analysis Failed system, I agree, is somewhat akin to a lottery, so I don’t bother spending too much time on it. I worry that how I work is not the best accuracy but then again with the consensus results there has to be some sort of filter for inaccuracy.
Second…there are some links that delve more deeply. Here is one…
I’ve been doing Project Discovery since it launched. I’m not the highest level in the game at it but I’m up there. It’s hard to answer your questions with out a back drop of sorts. I’ve been wanting to do another live stream here in the near future. I’ll try and post and give some heads up when I do so I can answer questions as I’m doing it.
But here is a link to my last one.
The real methods to discern if there are planets orbiting an eclipsing bynary require modeling, to see if there are scondary minima in the light curve due to a planet orbiting one of the star or shifts due to the gravitational field of the planet changing the orbital parameters of the system periodically. Another way could be detecting periodical shifts in the emission lines in the spectrum maybe hidden in the Doppler shift of one of the stars.
I think the only thing doable in game, would be to detect the secondary minima in the light curve of the binary.
This is something I’m writing on the spot, as soon as I have time I will get back to you with a more accurate answer.