Help NASA discover Jupiter-like planets right from your backyard: Here's how

NASA's new NASA citizen science project, the Unistellar Network Investigating TESS Exoplanets (UNITE), is giving people around the world an opportunity to discover and characterize some of the most interesting exoplanets - planets outside our Solar System - in our galaxy.

According to the agency, Jupiter-like giant planets play important roles in arranging planetary systems and can influence the abilities of planets to host life, but, detecting them requires coordinated observations across multiple hours or days by astronomers worldwide.

These planets take months or years to circle their star once, making it difficult for astronomers to fully understand their orbit. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and other telescopes haven't had many chances to catch the temporary dimming of the exoplanet's star as the planet passes, or transits, in front of it.

NASA's UNITE project brings together telescope users from around the world to make their own observations of transiting exoplanets to find these Jupiter-like objects.

UNITE volunteers observe planet candidates found by NASA's TESS mission. When multiple dimmings, or transits, are discovered that tells how long an exoplanet takes to orbit its star, helping astronomers where and when they should look if we want to study that exoplanet in detail later.

"Only a network of people around the world, cooperating to observe the same target, will be able to catch more transits by these exoplanets. This can be because these planets take many hours to transit their star (much longer than a single night on Earth) or because the dates of future transits cannot yet be accurately predicted. With your observations, scientists can understand the orbits and conditions of these foreign worlds like never before," the project website says.

Discovering Jupiter-like planets requires coordinated observations from telescope users all over the world, so it's time to UNITE! Learn more about how you can join the collaboration as part of this new @NASA #CitizenScience project: https://t.co/ho2T8i9PKJ pic.twitter.com/d8S6H3KLxf

— NASA Citizen Science (@DoNASAScience) December 13, 2022