Thanks to DASH who partnered up with Ipswich astronomical, Michael and I listened to Chris Lintotte from our own front rooms. The Crowd that Chris waxes lyrical here, are the citizen scientists who under the project Zooniverse, look out from their own back yards at a tapestry of stars, map them and together find sense and planets. The one he spoke about first was K2-138. It is a large star with a system of up to 6 planets discovered by citizen scientists. Four were found in the first two days of the Exoplanet Explorers project on Zooniverse in early April 2017, while up to two more were revealed in further analysis. What is fascinating about this star and it’s orbiting planets is that each planet orbits at exactly twice the rate of the one before it. They used the Kepler telescope to view. Someone called Andrew, who lives in Darwin disovered them. The new Kepler is Tess for the Planet Hunters
He makes space science sound so simple. It’s all about colour, he says. Blue in a galaxy means it lives fast and dies young. Shape tells you what happened millions of years ago (spiral or elipitcal)
He reminded me that our milky way will one day collide with Andromeda and that the late great Sir Patrick Moore suggested that, if we could look from the outside of our galaxy, it would look like two fried eggs back to back.
Chris said: Being surprised by the universe is the thing that I want most in my life
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