Planet Hunters NGTS: A citizen science search with the Next Generation Transit Survey

当一颗系外行星经过它的主恒星(从它前面经过)时，恒星的一部分光线被阻挡，导致从地球上可以测量到的特有的暗淡。今天，我们知道有4000多个凌日行星/候选行星。下一代凌日观测(NGTS)由12个自动的20厘米望远镜组成，它们串联在一起监测夜空。自2015年以来，该调查已经产生了丰富的数据集，用于探测恒星变异性，并搜索数万颗恒星，以寻找凌日系外行星的特征。NGTS应用自动算法来识别凌日系外行星候选者，然后由科学小组检查进行审查和审查。这一过程涉及到由少数审查者造成的大量假阳性和潜在的偏见。银河动物园和行星猎人等公民科学项目已经证明，由大量非专家志愿者执行的分析任务是有价值的，其中众包评估的表现优于大多数自动程序和机器学习算法。这个博士项目旨在寻找可能在最初的NGTS搜索中遗漏的凌日系外行星信号。公众被征召通过一个网站帮助进行搜索，他们的任务是检查从NGTS算法搜索中识别出的恒星的几个特征曲线图。行星猎人NGTS项目(https://ngts.planethunters.org))于2021年10月启动。博士项目的主要目的是分析这一全新的公民科学项目的结果，开发一条软件管道，将多个志愿者分类结合在一起，并确定最有希望的行星候选者。该项目还将通过将结果与专家分类进行比较并使用模拟的行星凌日来衡量该项目的探测效率。我们预计，该项目的一个组成部分将涉及执行、分析和解释来自地面光学望远镜的观测数据，以验证和描述来自NGTS公民科学项目的发现。

When an exoplanet transits (passes in front of) its host star, a portion of the star's light is blocked, resulting in a characteristic dimming that can be measured from Earth. Today we know of over 4000 transiting planets/planet candidates. The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) consists of twelve automated 20cm telescopes working in tandem to monitor the night sky. Observing since 2015, the survey has produced a rich dataset to probe stellar variability and search tens of thousands of stars for the signatures of transiting exoplanets. NGTS applies automated algorithms to identify transiting exoplanet candidates that are then reviewed and vetted by science team inspection. This process involves a large number of false positives and potential biases created by the small number of reviewers. Citizen science projects such as Galaxy Zoo and Planet Hunters have demonstrated that analysis tasks performed by large numbers of non-expert volunteers are of value, with the crowd-sourced assessments outperforming the majority of automated routines and machine learning algorithms.This PhD project aims to search for transiting exoplanet signals that may have been missed in the initial NGTS search. The public are enlisted to help in this search via a website where they are tasked with inspecting several characteristic plots from stars identified from the NGTS algorithmic search. The Planet Hunters NGTS project(https://ngts.planethunters.org) launched in October 2021. The main aim of the PhD project is to analyse the results from this brand-new citizen science project, developing a software pipeline to combine the multiple volunteer classifications together and identifying the most promising planet candidates. The project will also involve measuring the detection efficiency of the project, by comparing the results with expert classifications and using simulated planet transits. We expect that a component of this project will involve performing, analysing, and interpreting observational data from optical ground-based telescopes to validate and characterise discoveries from the NGTS citizen science project.