Planet Hunters: New Kepler planet candidates from analysis of quarter 2

TL;DR

This paper reports new planet candidates discovered in Kepler data through citizen science efforts, demonstrating the effectiveness of volunteer review in identifying previously uncatalogued exoplanets.

Contribution

It introduces new planet candidates found via citizen science analysis of Kepler data, highlighting the value of distributed volunteer review in exoplanet discovery.

Findings

Two new planet candidates with periods of 97.46 and 284.03 days.

Candidates have radii of 5.3 and 3.8 Earth radii.

Volunteer review can uncover candidates missed by automated pipelines.

Abstract

We present new planet candidates identified in NASA Kepler quarter two public release data by volunteers engaged in the Planet Hunters citizen science project. The two candidates presented here survive checks for false-positives, including examination of the pixel offset to constrain the possibility of a background eclipsing binary. The orbital periods of the planet candidates are 97.46 days (KIC 4552729) and 284.03 (KIC 10005758) days and the modeled planet radii are 5.3 and 3.8 R_Earth. The latter star has an additional known planet candidate with a radius of 5.05 R_Earth and a period of 134.49 which was detected by the Kepler pipeline. The discovery of these candidates illustrates the value of massively distributed volunteer review of the Kepler database to recover candidates which were otherwise uncatalogued.