EXOPLANET HUNTER

"Can a tiny dip in starlight reveal another world?"

Exoplanet Hunter analyzes how a star's brightness changes over time and looks for repeating dips that may indicate a planet passing in front of the star.

🪐 TRY A SAMPLE 🔭 SEE HOW IT WORKS

HOW TRANSIT DETECTION WORKS

Understanding exoplanet transit hunting in 3 simple steps

01 — WATCH THE STAR

ASTRONOMICAL MONITORING

A space telescope records a star's brightness continuously over days or weeks.

02 — FIND THE DIP

CROSSING PLANET DIMS LIGHT

A planet passing in front of its host star creates a tiny drop in observed brightness.

03 — CHECK IF IT REPEATS

PERIODIC PATTERN MATCH

If similar dips repeat at regular time intervals, the signal becomes a potential transit candidate.

TRY IT WITH REALISTIC ASTRONOMICAL DATA

Select a dataset to launch the algorithmic candidate detector instantly

🪐 CLEAR TRANSIT
Synthetic — Earth-size example

Repeated brightness drops that may indicate a planet passing in front of its star.

🌫 NOISY SIGNAL
Synthetic — Shallow transit in noise

A faint transit-like signal hidden among stronger measurement noise.

⭐ VARIABLE STAR
Synthetic — Pulsation (False Positive)

Brightness changes caused by the star itself, not a planetary transit.

〰 NO TRANSIT
Synthetic — Quiet baseline star

No repeating transit-like pattern detected.

🌌 KEPLER-186
SIMULATED — KEPLER-186-LIKE SIGNAL

Simulated light curve modeled after Kepler-186 planet transit parameters.

📁 Drag & Drop custom CSV light-curve file here, or Click to Browse (Supported format: Time, Flux)

Stellar brightness over time

Target: Synthetic Star EX-401 (G-type Solar Analog)

Normal brightness
Possible transit
600 Data Points
🪐 POTENTIAL TRANSIT CANDIDATE

We found a repeating brightness pattern that resembles a planetary transit.

87
TRANSIT-LIKE SIGNAL SCORE How strongly the observed pattern resembles a planetary transit. Not a probability of planet detection.

WHY WAS THIS SIGNAL FLAGGED?

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WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

This pattern is interesting, but it is not proof of a planet. Other astronomical or instrumental effects can produce similar signals.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Thousands of stars have been observed by space telescopes like NASA Kepler, TESS, and James Webb. Scientists can use starlight brightness changes to search for distant worlds that cannot be seen directly.

Exoplanet Hunter turns part of this scientific process into an interactive visual tool, letting students and curious minds explore how astronomers discover new worlds.

WHAT MAKES EXOPLANET HUNTER DIFFERENT?

  • Uses real astronomical light-curve algorithms (Detrending & Box Dip Search).
  • Turns invisible starlight signals into intuitive interactive charts.
  • Explains why a candidate was flagged instead of showing a black-box score.
  • Designed specifically for accessibility and a 30–60 second judge demonstration.

UNDER THE HOOD: THE ANALYSIS PIPELINE

How raw telescope brightness readings become candidate scores

01 Raw Brightness Data
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02 Clean the Signal
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03 Find Repeating Dips
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04 Compare the Pattern
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05 Rank Candidate
Click to view Advanced Scientific Parameters & Algorithmic Details

Data Preprocessing: Moving median filter (window size = 25 points) to remove stellar baseline variability and normalize median flux to 1.0.

Dip Search Algorithm: Box-fitting dip detector scanning for starlight drops below 3σ baseline standard deviation threshold.

Candidate Metrics: Evaluates periodicity variance, depth consistency across transit events, and transit duration limits.

Note on AI vs Algorithm: This tool uses algorithmic astronomical signal processing in pure JavaScript. It does not claim to use a trained machine learning model.