Planet Hunters Talk

Needed: Your Feedback on the "Mini-Course" in Planet Hunters

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Hello, Planet Hunters zooites!

    We at the Zooniverse need your help! We're looking for some feedback on your experience with the "mini-course" included within Planet Hunters. (The one that looks like this and occasionally pops up during classifying.)

    We'd like to know... did you opt-in, or opt-out, of the mini-course?

    If you participated/viewed it, what did you like, and what didn't you like about it? Was it helpful; could it be improved? If you opted out, why?

    And for both groups... especially when you were new to Planet Hunters, what type of content/information in a mini-course would have been most valuable to you?

    Please let us know; no matter what, your thoughts will be extremely helpful for us going forward. Thank you!

    Posted

  • Bookofchange by Bookofchange

    I opted-in. I felt that the course was redundant to the information covered in the main website introductions. However, found it fun and generally useful for refreshing. If I had not read the website background information all the way through... it would have been extremely helpful in better understanding what we were trying to accomplish.

    Sideways related. I felt that the simulated transits did not match the transit examples in the tutorials very well. Many of the simulations and known Kepler planets were quite difficult to determine (hidden in a lot of noise)... while the tutorials were clear downward spikes in the graph. And left me wondering if I understood the tutorials well enough to continue to hunt.

    Posted

  • Lochnivar by Lochnivar

    I personally love the mini-courses. It provides insight and some great brain-candy.

    Posted

  • chairgaf by chairgaf

    The mini coarse was informative, but I found not too relevant to what we are supposed to do here.

    Also, the exit points did not work for me, so had to hit the back button on the browser to get back here.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    @Bookofchange , @Lochnivar , @chairgaf , thank you guys so much for the feedback so far! Anyone else who could weigh in would be hugely appreciated! 😃

    Posted

  • ggccg by ggccg in response to Bookofchange's comment.

    The long cadence light curves we are evaluating leave a lot to be desired when looking for small planet transits. Between a lack of data (compared the the short cadence light curves that the NASA team uses) and instrument error (one of the reasons you sometimes see transit points above the rest of the curve), it is often near impossible to detect small planets that are showing only 3 or 4 data points in these long cadence light curves.

    Posted

  • jgkitarel by jgkitarel

    The mini-courses are informative and useful from an early teaching perspective.

    Posted

  • lukethor by lukethor

    Mini courses are informative, but they should relevant with the plotting data is being displayed. For example if there is a transit in the graph, the mini course should have an information associated with a transit. There is plenty of info to miss lead the beginner to start with

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    @ggccg, @jgkitarel, @lukethor, thanks!!

    We are definitely continuing to pay attention to this thread and this feedback. We really appreciate it!

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Hi @mkchrc14 -- your comment has some odd formatting that is preventing me from actually reading it. Could you perhaps please remove the formatting so we can actually see what you're trying to say? 😃

    Thanks!!

    Posted

  • starhunter11 by starhunter11

    I like the mini-course a lot.

    I have an interesting history with Planet Hunters. I started planet hunting using the old version but stopped because I no longer found enough time for it. When I came back, everything was different! I liked everything about the new version. The mini-course was just the icing on the cake for me.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thanks @starhunter11 --! I'll pass that along. We appreciate it!!

    Posted

  • mkchrc14 by mkchrc14

    I have absolutely no idea why my comment came in that format. Here goes hoping this next attempt is readable.I agreed with bookofchange in his/her side remark about transit examples in the tutorial didn't prepare me enough and I wondered if whether I was a suitable volunteer. The comment encouraged me knowing other people in their early stage of planet hunting had similar difficulties.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thanks for that, @mkchrc14 -- passing it along!

    Posted

  • rudim2014 by rudim2014

    What I would need to be efficient with deciding what is going on in a light curve is a menu of hashtag comments that I can click on so I can see the difference between a pulsar and a variable and a cepheid, for example, on the spot.

    Posted

  • prot91 by prot91

    Hi, "took" the course today and found it interesting. Although I would have more appreciated more details on how to read the different graphs, like how to identify an EB etc.

    Posted

  • raptor71 by raptor71

    Hello, It's great to see K2 up and running!

    It looks like there have been some changes to the available viewing scalability controls. Perhaps it is an error on my end, but it seems many of the charts run along the bottom of the luminosity scale... I don't know how I would see a transit in this situation.

    Thanks.

    Posted

  • raptor71 by raptor71 in response to rudim2014's comment.

    I agree, that would be helpful.

    Posted

  • ggccg by ggccg in response to raptor71's comment.

    I doubt any transits are being lost. If there was one, the luminosity scale would be extended downward.to show those less bright data points.

    Posted

  • mike577 by mike577 in response to rudim2014's comment.

    i agree with this for sure... i wish i could reference the hash tags because they are much more helpful than the help feature

    Posted

  • erorick72 by erorick72

    Hello, I'm new here and not a trained scientist. I followed a link from a news article that took me directly to the tutorial. I have not had any other experience and I must say the tutorial left me with a lot of questions once I signed up and started looking at actual data. In the tutorial the transits are long, clear, and regular. The first graph I looked at confused me, the main band of light cut across the graph on a diagonal and it had spikes up and down, not at clear intervals, are these transits? I realize these questions probably sound silly to someone with experience but remember I have no training or experience but I'd really love to contribute. If anyone could direct me to somewhere on the site or on a different site where I could do some reading and understand better how to interpret the data, and be of more help, I would really appreciate it.

    Thanx!

    Posted

  • aliobrienmd by aliobrienmd

    I just started yesterday, and I opted in for the mini-course. I'm enjoying the mini-course. In the tutorial, I would have liked to see more examples of light traces with all of the transits marked (especially more subtle transits), and more opportunities to get feedback on performance when just starting out. I was really confused until I read the web pages listed under "The Science."

    Posted

  • catchcaleb by catchcaleb

    I would have liked more info on the types of curves I was seeing in and tagging in different images i.e. Cephied, heartbeat, rrlyrae, variable. The info was pretty basic stuff and I found myself getting bored with it in the later slides. I want to know more about the images I'm looking at and what they tell me about the star or stars that create them....

    Posted

  • catchcaleb by catchcaleb

    I would also like to understand more about how the volunteer's classifications are used and what happens if our classifications actually turn out to be planets. Are we notified and such?

    Posted

  • starhunter11 by starhunter11 in response to erorick72's comment.

    You do not have to mark any of the tiny dips. They are just variations in a star's brightness. Only mark the ones that are glaringly obvious.

    Posted

  • pat2598 by pat2598

    I dont find the ipad mini showing the image without the enlarged menu obscuring the vertical windows used to frame the transits. Thus it becomes inoperable at times and discouraging. Your interface needs software development to clear access to program target elements. Keep trying to improve it.

    Posted

  • MrBees by MrBees

    I was just going through some of the examples trying to understand what we are looking for when I missed four transits in one example. The transits were all three and four data points close to the average brightness and I could not see how they could be called transits. So there has to be something, probably a lot of stuff, that the experts are seeing that I am not. Please provide more information along with explanations.
    Thanks, MrBees

    Posted

  • Paul_star_12 by Paul_star_12

    The Mini Course Started Off with Some Non-Active Star Images. Was Great to see Other People Favored the Same Stars as Me. Some Kepler Exoplanets are being Found. Some are Bright as Magnitude 8.717 to Magnitude 11.921. Possible Magnitude 14.6 is more Active with Exoplanets.

    Posted

  • Audriusa by Audriusa

    While I am far from astronomy by profession or education and only read something for myself time to time, the course was generally too known for me to be useful. It could contain also some deeper information.

    Posted

  • Jiangdongying by Jiangdongying

    The mini coarse was informative!I know so much about using transit to identify a planet,star size,but seems all the pictures are same...including the timing of a transit..

    Posted

  • Brian_Eibert by Brian_Eibert

    I opted in to the mini-course to get more information on the science behind the project. I enjoy it. It is technical enough to be interesting for those with some physics background but not so bogged down that the non-physics student can't understand what is going on. I feel that there could be a solid addition to this describing statistically significant changes in the plot points. Also, there are times where the y-axis on the graph does not contain the points adequately; there should be a way to expand this axis when the points leave the standard y-axis level.

    Posted

  • DZM by DZM admin

    Thanks for the feedback, @Brian_Eibert --!

    Posted

  • rashismart2000 by rashismart2000

    I am new to astronomy and I do not know what i am looking for to hunt planet. Can you please advise what i have to do before i jump to the project for hunting planet? where I can find this mini course?

    Posted

  • squirreltastic101 by squirreltastic101

    I thoroughly enjoyed the mini course and found it to be an excellent companion to finding transits. I loved the background information and the facts about Kepler especially because it really gave me an idea of what I was assisting with. The only thing I would recommend is a little more direction about finding transits and what certain patterns mean. Other than that I absolutely loved it.

    Posted

  • bayufp by bayufp

    Quarters
    1-1
    1-2
    1-3

    Metadata

    EPIC no: 203700439

    2mass id: 16513362-2514241

    sdss id: unknown

    Mag: 12.162

    Jmag: 10.965

    Hmag: 10.621

    Kmag: 10.56

    hey mising user please only

    Posted

  • bayufp by bayufp

    mising the user online in web

    Posted

  • astronomique by astronomique

    The mini courses are very helpful. Perhaps I'm just not able to navigate the website well to find what I need, but is there a way to search #starspot, or #cepheidvariable, or #binary and see a gallery of sample data/plots or examples that have been confirmed to have been classified as such?

    Posted

  • LoveLookin by LoveLookin

    I opted in. I found it to be very helpful as a newbie.

    Posted

  • kfjames by kfjames

    Cleared cookies and got past the loading screen but then it was the same star that was in the "tutorial"

    Posted

  • hdrudge by hdrudge

    I seem to be unable to get past the introductory course. I have finished it and not been offered a chance to do anything else. I have tried signing out and back in and I don't get any further. You've just blown off a volunteer.

    Posted

  • Choltai by Choltai

    I'm not sure if I did the mini course or not. I signed up yesterday, and I remember clicking on a button that said Mini Course, but it looked no different from what I had been doing for the classifying.

    Also, I keep searching the site to get lots of examples of different kinds of transits and eclipsing binaries but I can't find anything straightforward. Searching through the tags isn't productive since it's so objective, but it would be extraordinarily helpful to have a page of 20+ different kinds of confirmed transits and a page of 20+ different images of other tags like eclipsing binaries and contamination. I felt like the tutorial was too brief and I can't find a way to go back to it for more study. I feel like my classifications aren't helping but just adding to data noise.

    Posted

  • Zoegas by Zoegas

    Hi
    I think that the "Mini-Course" was good. it relay gave a broad understanding about the subject. But what I am missing is a youtube video that goes through the "software" at the internet page. How to use, how different patterns can look like and so on. As a person that don't have English as his first language it had helped a lot, to both hear and see how to use the tool. Otherwise, great page and great project.

    Posted

  • isra26 by isra26

    As a brand new user I didn't get to read the main introduction on the site and went directly to the graph and the mini course. I found the mini-course a little difficult to understand, I notice the x and y axis where highlighted as the course explained what they are, but I was confused as to what I was supposed to look for. I later saw the animation on how a star light path is formed and what happens when a planet transits in front of the host star. I think that would it be helpful to know in the beginning. Also the examples are very clear as to what is happening but the reality is that the typical data is not like that, I think a couple of exercises would be helpful, just so I can really understand what is it that I'm looking for. A few videos would also be helpful, specially if they are from real case scenarios, perhaps showing transit, and other examples. Also, I noticed you encourage users to tag but I couldn't find a way to do that, again today is just my first time and maybe I haven't look hard enough, but as a professional UI-UX developer this info shouldn't be too hard to access.

    Posted

  • weegreenblobbie by weegreenblobbie

    I've had sign in trouble on Chrome on Ubuntu 14.

    Hey, I think it would be useful to have the start brightness mean and y-axis in units of std. Or at least a button to switch back and forth.

    Posted

  • bobmccown by bobmccown

    I, too, would like more information and real examples of the various phenomena observed. Where does one find the object or image identification?

    Posted

  • bsmart300 by bsmart300

    love the mini courses, also the displayed data after a set.. but I forget the hashtags sometimes and can't find them as a reminder.

    Posted

  • Numlock1001 by Numlock1001

    What bsmart300 says, it need a link to http://blog.planethunters.org/2014/11/04/suggested-talk-hashtags/

    Posted

  • frafer by frafer

    I feel like comparisons between "false positives" would be really useful. I have trouble telling a few types of star apart, and the examples are such extreme classes they're barely useful.

    Also not related to the main course, but please let us see the entire graph, it's hard for PH to be useful with such a short time graph.

    Posted

  • bconthecoast by bconthecoast

    Learned quite a bit in the intro course but it leaves a little to be desired. For instance.. training info keeps popping up.. every time. Same stuff i already looked at? is this normal? where do i leave comments.. says in tutorial to leave them on talk, however when i go to talk i don't see a section to comment on that star? just a whole lot of posts by others on other stars.. so i am feeling pretty lost yet i took the time to do the tutorial.. a quick guide to the user interface would have been great, or a more intuitive one with popup remarks or hints... that always helps. a guide to hashtags with a small picture of what each of them are so i don't have to print them or draw them myself for reference would have been nice too. how about a star that is actually showing the information that you are trying to teach in the tutorial while you are in that section of the tutorial? seriously i don't know if i am still in the tutorial or if it is completed or if there is always tutorial information being given to us between each star we look at.. blame me if i don't know but seriously its your tutorial..

    Posted

  • jrhstanley by jrhstanley

    I liked them, they are interesting and break up the task of planet hunting and let your brain focus on something else

    Posted

  • scottr3 by scottr3

    I found the mini-course interesting but I still have some questions about classifying certain stars. I'd like to better understand Cepheid versus variable and don't even know how to pronounce rrlyrae let alone what one looks like. And how do you tell the difference between eclipsing binaries versus multiple transits?

    Posted

  • Thor_42 by Thor_42

    I agree with those asking for more examples for different stars / phenomena.

    Both, the minicourse as well as the hashtag-examples seem to be more or less ideal / easily recognizable examples.
    It would be great if we were shown not so ideal examples as well (especially since the data we normally encounter seem to rather consist of not so easily recognizable examples and not of ideal candidates)

    Posted

  • lunacanales by lunacanales

    the course is fast and easy to understand

    Posted

  • fdzgeos by fdzgeos

    When I see a possible exoplanet on the curve, how can we download the data to analyze possible periods for the planetary system?
    Thanks

    Posted

  • hunkris by hunkris

    Wrong section, sorry

    Posted

  • eplief8 by eplief8 in response to Bookofchange's comment.

    I feel totally like @Bookofchange !

    Posted

  • timothyscarlett@gmail.com by timothyscarlett@gmail.com

    Hi- I just started today, several days after registering and doing the initial tutorial. At the time I registered, I didn't have time to do either the "mini-course." I would like to go back and do it now, although I can't find a ready link. I'll have to continue classifying and hope that I get a pop up for them.

    At the same time, I found the very brief intro was good but left me with a lot of questions. At first it seemed like I was ready to go, but then by the time I'd looked at 5 or 10 images, I was less confident instead of more. I then read the Transits tab on this page:
    http://www.planethunters.org/#/science
    and read up on Starspots and that helped, but I wonder if you couldn't beef up the intro training to include more data plots, but explaining what pulsars, binaries, starspots, bad data, and such all look like in more examples so newbies can tell them from transits more easily. It would really help, I think.

    Just a thought. THanks for the great work!

    Posted

  • Andro1d by Andro1d

    I think we need zoom-in and zoom-out with mouse weel

    Posted

  • jgkitarel by jgkitarel

    There are some issues in the simulations. Most of the simulated transits are far more clearly distinct than what you would see in an actual transit, with sharper and clear changes in the light curves. While I realize this is due to the fact that you want to start new planet hunters out with something easy, you may want to do it in a way where they can see the difference between the tutorial version and what the more likely scenario would be.

    A good idea would be to use curves with known exoplanets that had the added noise filtered out, then, in the simulation, show the difference after the discovery. Not only would it highlight some of the difficulty, but it would also get a new planet hunter some insight in what patterns to look for. I also agree that you need to give more information on the various possibilities are and how they normally look with a clear demonstration on them during the tutorial.

    Posted

  • gerard by gerard

    The tutorial and mini-courses are always needed and efficient.

    Regarding the actual searching and clasifications: in addition of simply marking a transit in the chart, if you desire the user to actually type a hashtag (#pulsating, #variable, #CV, #eclipsingbinary, #Cepheid, #flare, etc) I highly recommend what you did in GalaxyZoo, where you had several set buttons to classify the shape of the galaxies without having to type it at every single screen. I know I could give you all that data more efficiently if I did not have to type so much! So I stopped doing it.

    My second request, not related to tutorials, is to PLEASE remove the old known light-curves with glitches and or shown to have no planets. I find myself looking at the same images over and over (I can read my own comments from a month before) and I question the efficiency of having so many already identified useless (or already processed) images taking so much space and human time when we could be processing new light-curves.

    Posted

  • catlover441 by catlover441

    loved them, it was very informative

    Posted

  • andrewmaguire by andrewmaguire

    I agree with gerards comment of 3 months ago. It feels like I am looking at images that have been classified months ago.
    The simulations are useful to remind us what to look for but some of them result in "transits" that are completely within the bounds of the light curve. Having real example of known transits would be better.

    Not sure if the mini tutorial interface is meant to prevent you from looking back at the light curve after your classification, since the window
    is replaced with an example light curve and all the comments by other users (most seem to say there is a transiting planet on every star.
    If that is the min course interface, could not work out how to turn it off.

    Overall, not sure if I added anything at all in my hour (although maybe I found one which looked pretty clear and was not a simulation!).

    Posted

  • neutrino31628 by neutrino31628

    Opt-in. Excellent mini tutorial, simple to read within a few seconds. I noticed I am inspired to learn quickly and more efficiently reading flash-card tutorials.

    Posted

  • Joannasephine by Joannasephine

    I also opted in, and found them interesting, but not especially helpful. They didn’t co-incide with what I was seeing in the data I was analysing at the time.

    My biggest problem here is just not knowing if I’m actually seeing a transit, or if it’s just noise. It’s great when you get something clear (and I did once see a Cephid (I think … it was a while ago) just after reading the relevant mini-course screen), but I spend a lot of time with the horrible feeling that I’m polluting the data, and end up slinking off in frustration.

    What would be really good would be a mini course with more examples of the sorts of things we’re actually seeing. Noisy stuff. I’m fine when they look like a diagram of rain falling. Where I need guidance is where the curve bucks all over the place spraying in all directions.

    Posted

  • PlanetGazer8359 by PlanetGazer8359

    What is actually a transit? All the white dots are different or the same stars?

    Posted

  • ATOMICBOMB by ATOMICBOMB

    The Mini - Courses are awsome

    Posted

  • vacationeer by vacationeer

    The mini courses are interesting and informative, but having just started, it is unclear what the goal is here. the examples shown are identifying transits which are VERY obvious. ones that a computer algorithm can obviously detect, but of the two 'simulated transits' I saw, the first one said there was a simulated transit , and there were no red circles on the screen, the second it was entirely unclear which points were presumed to be a transit, since they were within the bounds of the noise of the line. I would love to do more of this, but feel I don't have enough information to do so. it seems like the purpose of having humans look at this is to find abnormal types of transits, but all I've been shown to train me are normal transits. Finally, it would be useful for training purposes to be able to see what other people viewed as transits ( after having looked at the data) and learn/contrast-compare what you are doing vs. others, which would prompt greater discussions and learning. For example "I see you put a transit on day 2, what are the factors that led you to make this assumption?".

    Posted

  • JRSchmitt by JRSchmitt

    Sorry for the delay.

    Yeah, the mini courses use very obvious examples. Planet Hunters are very good at finding them. However, most planets in the data are not going to be so obvious. One of the reasons for the simulated planets is to give you feedback on not only the very obvious planets, but the marginal cases as well. They help us determine how good users are at finding true planets at different sizes. Many of the smallest simulated planets won't be visible at all, so you shouldn't feel bad about not getting them. This information is still valuable to us though.

    Posted

  • dukeart by dukeart

    I would really like to know how some transits are spotted in the simulations , they were really ambiguous . But after readinng about the reason for the simulations , it is a little clearer. I will continue educating myself in light curves.

    Posted

  • Yade by Yade

    Yeah i signed up, it popped up here 2 times then stopped all by itselv, but the little i saw didn't relate much to the problems we face in the diagrams.

    Posted

  • SpiralValve by SpiralValve

    I think mixing in more samples of what other people found would really help, when I look at a noisy picture I think im marking something but im always concerned im not marking properly. A little window with a legend and recent samples of what people hashtagged would be really helpful for visual reference.

    Posted

  • fulvio157 by fulvio157

    Very interesting mini courses. Love them.

    Posted

  • Bambura by Bambura in response to DZM's comment.

    Hello,

    I found the course useful and informative however for a complete beginner a lot to take in by learning all objects name.

    Bambura

    Posted

  • Pjber by Pjber

    A few questions; are the simulated transits real and approved as such by an astronomer or are they identified as transits by amateurs such as myself. I find some simulated transits have no discernable reason for being a transit. Would be helpful if as part of the help section that this could be elaborated. Thx.

    Posted

  • Pjber by Pjber

    It would be helpful if we could have access to many light curves with transits as identified by astronomers. This would allow us to study the various possible transits and become better at identifying transits ourselves.

    Posted

  • Oksi by Oksi

    Hello!
    I try to find transits and mark with hashtags. How can I know, are my hashtags right or wrong?

    Posted

  • Penney6660 by Penney6660

    is this board still active? mini course is helpful but I think having some kind of comparison would be very helpful, maybe some examples of the more difficult ones to spot so we know if were marking insignificant spots on some of the more crowded ones. iv seen a lot of smaller patterns that seem to indicate a possible planet but without something to compare it to on the go its difficult to distinguish possible debris from maybe a smaller planet or moon orbiting a larger star.

    Posted

  • decksterr by decksterr

    ^ indeed

    More diverse patterns would be nice, it could be introduced as "in-depth" tutorial or something like that, just for those that would like to get something a little more advanced.
    And maybe a little more could be said about why spotting those transits helps "science" and how might be used the provided data.

    Also, the part explaining where and how to use the forums is a bit overlooked and misexplained imo.

    Posted

  • MoonOwner by MoonOwner

    . (The one that looks like this and occasionally pops up during classifying.) Dear DZM, i would like to suggest that when you mention the size of planets compared to jupiter and the sun and other, you should compare to tenis ball to tenis court or something that is familiar to everyone. I never been to Jupiter to understand the size of it . Thanks and all the luck

    Posted

  • Algebreaker by Algebreaker

    Can I just confirm that you still get the message about a (known) transit being highlighted in red even if you correctly identified it? I've now done teh mini-course several times because I thought I must be missing something...

    Posted

  • deadogma by deadogma

    I love the idea. Maybe there should be 2 different versions, one for those who want the basics of the science and another for people like myself who are looking for very specific data spotting techniques and examples of finding the types of stars and possible object sightings that match the possible hash tags. The examples given with the help link on the classification page are way too vague and incomplete. Also there are examples after you take a stab at spotting anomalies that could be more useful if available before finishing with a data set or maybe available through a general page link so we can study it.
    Personally, I would like to know how to contribute successfully; I want to study and learn what to look for without wasting everyone's time making uninformed guesses.
    Thank you for taking time to offer such a fantastic way for armatures like myself to be involved in this worthy endeavor.

    Posted

  • PavelDubrou by PavelDubrou in response to DZM's comment.

    Hi there, can you please explain what noise refers to? Thank you

    Posted

  • julia.schmittymail.com by julia.schmittymail.com

    i enjoy the mini-courses. but a lot of the time the simulated transits are not obvious at all (points are within a normal curve)

    Posted

  • MICHAEL_FISHER by MICHAEL_FISHER

    It is pretty good, and simple for beginners but could do with some tutorial plus bonus course or two to throw in more inclusive info like the help section and maybe some more interesting things. http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/mendez/ASTRO110LAB11/variables.html
    http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/ebstar/ebstar.html
    http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr1/en/proj/basic/color/fromstars.asp
    https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/timing1.html
    http://msi.nga.mil/MSISiteContent/StaticFiles/NAV_PUBS/APN/Chapt-15.pdf
    etc, etc, etc........
    of course I used the original site back in the days when men were men and stars were worried and since having coming back for a bit I have found less info available to be able to see the big picture and long term pattern recognition, for example there was a function on there where you look at all the quarters of the same star in one go, where as now it is a little random and haphazard I think, although that is just a personal opinion

    Posted

  • MICHAEL_FISHER by MICHAEL_FISHER in response to PavelDubrou's comment.

    The Noise (N) is the total random contribution from various sources that affect the measurement of the signal. Also measured in [e]. We will see after that there are various sources of noises and that they behave differently. The noise is basically the error on the flux measured:
    S +/- N,
    like, 1532 +/- 231 electrons, or 123+/- 14 mJy.

    Posted

  • MICHAEL_FISHER by MICHAEL_FISHER in response to PavelDubrou's comment.

    http://www.eso.org/~ohainaut/ccd/sn.html basically noisy means it is very active and is bubbling away like a pan on the stove, flares UV bursts etc....

    Posted

  • jkbadenhoop by jkbadenhoop in response to DZM's comment.

    I am an instructor for an online astronomy course and want to use Planet Hunter as an activity. It says at the beginning that you can score yourself on the mini-course but I can't figure out how to do this. Can you tell me? -- Jay Badenhoop jkbadenhoop@mail.wvu.edu

    Posted

  • sdsingh by sdsingh

    I love the mini-course. I'm very new to this site and love the information! Definitely learning a lot.

    Thanks!

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  • bluestone9 by bluestone9

    Some of the simulations are very difficult to spot and fall on the normal curve of the star - it would be useful for the course to explain how these planets can be identified.

    Posted

  • Todd0231 by Todd0231

    Hi All,
    I'm new and need some advise. I understand I'm looking for stars/suns that dim over time. My question is more fundamental, how can i tell its the same one in a field of hundreds of them. It seems that when I try to zoom I narrow the field I narrow the time index as well. Is there a way to zoom in on just a few stars without loosing the time axes? that way I can look at a few at a time. Happy for any advice I can get this that have been at this for well longer me....
    Thanks

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  • sasha2 by sasha2

    please add more examples of planets transit

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  • reflight4 by reflight4

    I opted in. The reason I slog it out on here is because I want to learn- and having the opportunity to be presented with periodic factoids is awesome!

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  • Ella7777 by Ella7777

    I opted in, and liked the mini course. I really found it interesting to read what they had to say.

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  • nayak by nayak

    The mini course is a good idea, but the curves shown are too idealistic. It feels like taking a theoretical course on driving and getting directly on to the highway.

    My personal suggestion would be to include more realistic and noisy data and examples of 0.05 percent dips or so. Or may be an example of an already found exoplanet like the "Kepler 64b".

    Also, it would be great if we could refer to the hashtags somewhere close to the comment section.

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  • stancallewier by stancallewier

    The examples are good but sometimes it is not good explained why something a transit is.

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  • echodrops by echodrops

    As someone who opted in on them, I enjoy the mini courses. They are really quite interesting and have given me some more insight into what exactly I am doing on Planet Hunters.

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  • OvalDreamX by OvalDreamX

    the courses are ok but maybe they could have usefull tips of how to "see" the not that obvious transits (like looking for diagonal lines of dots). i hope i had explained that well.
    If not, sorry for the bad english 😃

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  • razorbackr by razorbackr

    I liked the course, it was short and interesting to me, and gave me just enough knowledge. I used that information to google for more in-depth information and have been learning a lot about MAST, Kepler objects, condition flags, flux, and have been reading papers on arxiv, all kinds of other things.

    The only thing I think would be an immediate improvement is to show light curves that aren't the clean, easy to identify ones. Those ones are good, but, what are they relative to? Show for example a panel of 4 light curves, with a 5th at the top representing the model, and the 4 below being examples.

    Posted