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Who is involved in Planet Hunters?
Planet Hunters is a collaboration between Yale University and the Zooniverse. The lightcurves provided on the site are from the publicly released data obtained by NASA's Kepler mission.
ORGANIZATIONS
THE TEAM
CONTACT US
ORGANIZATIONS
The Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium - America's First Planetarium - was founded in 1930 by Chicago business leader Max Adler. The Adler is a recognized leader in science education, with a focus on inspiring young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Throughout 80 years, the Adler has inspired the next generation of explorers by sharing the personal stories of space exploration and America’s space heroes.
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The University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is the oldest in the English-speaking world having been founded in the 11th or 12th centuries. Today, it combines research in the humanities with major effort in the natural sciences and medicine. Citizen science is supported by the Department of Physics, the Division of Mathematics, Physical and Life Sciences, and the Oxford Martin Schools.
GO TO TOPVizzuality
Vizzuality is the company behind the design of Planet Hunters. They are a specialized company working on conservation projects and stories that matter in general. They work with multiple international organizations dedicated to Biodiversity, Conservation, Citizen science and Humanitarian response. Check out their website for other interesting projects.
GO TO TOPYale University
The Exoplanets group at Yale is headed by Professor Debra Fischer. The group's research projects include Doppler planet searches, analysis of the properties of planet-hosting stars, and instrumentation and software development to investigate novel designs needed for achieving better Doppler precision.
Founded in 2001, the goal of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA) is to foster interactions among members of the Astronomy and Physics Departments, as well as Applied Physics and other departments at Yale that have interests in the disciplines of astronomy and astrophysics. YCAA provides the umbrella under which related activities in separate departments can be coordinated and carried out, and is jointly managed by the Yale Physics and Astronomy Departments.
GO TO TOPZooniverse
The Zooniverse is home to the internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The Zooniverse and the suite of projects it contains is produced, maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance. The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other partners around the world to produce projects that use the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers.
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NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program
Headquartered at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the Exoplanet Exploration Program is dedicated to the development of technology and programs (including the Kepler mission) to detect and characterize planets that orbit other stars. The public PlanetQuest site is a one-stop shop for NASA exoplanet news, educational articles, and interactive features.
GO TO TOPTHE TEAM
Michele Beleu, Yale University
is a Project Manager for the Yale Astronomy Exoplanets group, with experience ranging from website and application development to educational programs. She has a weakness for fruit of all kinds, and a penchant for getting to the bottom of things.
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John Brewer, Yale University
is an Astronomy graduate student at Yale, and an avid spectral data cruncher in the search for new exoplanets. He has also been known to make a mean cranberry pie.
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Debra Fischer, Yale University
is a Professor of Astronomy at Yale University, with a joint appointment in Geology & Geophysics. She has been on the hunt for extra solar planets since 1997 -- just after the first planet outside our solar system was discovered -- and she searches out answers (and more good questions!) about the mysteries of exoplanets, their location, and their composition night and day.
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Matt Giguere, Yale University
is an Astronomy graduate student at Yale. Lately, he has been working on improvements to planet transit identification software, and analyzing several multi-planet systems.
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Chris Lintott, Adler Planetarium
is an astronomer who is normally found in Oxford, but is currently spending a year at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. He normally studies star and galaxy formation, but is delighted to have the chance to find planets. When not working, he can be found either at the opera or in a nice glass of wine.
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Stuart Lynn, University of Oxford
is an astrophysicist and the lead developer for Planet Hunters. Normally more at home with galaxies than planets he is excited about the prospect of helping discover a planet.
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Kevin Schawinski, Yale University
is a 2009 Einstein Fellow in the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA) and the Physics Department at Yale University. Kevin studies how galaxies form, and how they co-evolve with the supermassive black holes that lurk at their centers. He helped start Galaxy Zoo, another citizen science project, and is over the moon about the launch of Planet Hunters
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Meg Schwamb, Yale University
is a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow in the Yale Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics (YCAA) and the Physics Department. Meg studies the small bodies of the outer solar system and what they can tell us about how the solar system formed. She is currently hunting for dwarf planets residing in the southern skies. While not observing, Meg can be found hanging out with her black cat Stella. Meg is supported by the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-1003258.
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Robert Simpson, University of Oxford
is a Zooniverse Researcher and Developer at Oxford University. Robert studies the process of star and planet formation and has a turbulent relationship with the coffee machine at Zooniverse HQ.
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Arfon Smith, University of Oxford
is the technical lead of the Zooniverse. He used to know lots of things about astronomy but these days spends most of his time thinking in code.
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Julien Spronck, Yale University
is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Exoplanets group at Yale. Much of his work revolves around designing and building instruments to improve what we can see with existing telescopes on Earth. Little known facts about Julien include his skill on harmonica, and great aptitude for finding things.
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David Ciardi, NASA Exoplanet Science Institute
is an external collaborator on Planet Hunters. He is a member of the CoRoT and Kepler Follow-up teams.
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Andrew Howard, University of California, Berkeley
is an external collaborator on Planet Hunters. He hunts for small planets with the Keck Telescopes.
GO TO TOPCONTACT US
Online Discussion Forum
If you have a question about any aspect of Planet Hunters, the best place to find an answer is on our community pages. There you can find lots of knowledgeable Zooites, and users can submit lightcurves they find curious or just plain interesting to the forum for discussion. Join them on the Official Planet Hunters Talk pages.
Forum moderators
Tony Hoffman, a Planet Hunters forum moderator, is a technology analyst for PCMag.com. A director of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, Tony has participated in the SOHO comets program, Spacewatch FMO Project, and several Zooniverse citizen science projects in addition to Planet Hunters
Joe Constant, is an Event Investigator for Duke Energy at Catawba Nuclear Station. He is a moderator for the Planet Hunters Talk Boards.
Planet Hunters moderator Jo Echo Syan (echo-lily-mai) has been a member of the Zooniverse since 2009 and is also a Merger Zoo moderator over on the Galaxy Zoo forum. Completing a 1st class degree in fine art is currently exploring how art and science can fuse together with Enjoy Chaos
GO TO TOPTwitter and Blog
Keep up to date with what the Planet Hunters team are doing and our latest results on the Planet Hunters Blog and Twitter Feed.
GO TO TOPUnfortunately we cannot reply to most of the email we receive. However, if you still want to try, you can send an email to the team at team@planethunters.org. If you have a professional inquiry, then the individual team members can be contacted via their institutions.
GO TO TOPMaterial on this site is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DRL-0941610. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).