What is Exoplanet Watch?
Exoplanet Watch promotes a welcoming and inclusive community. Exoplanet Watch is for anyone and everyone.
Want to be a part of new scientific discoveries? Want to engage in the Exoplanet Watch community?
- Getting involved is easier than ever! If you are new to Exoplanet Watch, we recommend you follow this New User Checklist.
- Invite your friends! (Share your progress with family and friends!)
- You can be involved as much as you like, whether reducing your own data or simply learning more about Exoplanet Watch
- NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE NEEDED
- NO TELESCOPE NEEDED!
- We are working on developing a framework to get robotic telescope data and time to those users without a telescope (or who live in cloudy or light polluted locations!)
- Stay in touch with the rest of the Exoplanet Watch community by joining our Slack Workspace
- Slack, a free messaging app, is the primary way that the Exoplanet Watch team and community keeps in touch with each other to help make this project a success. All are welcome and encouraged to join! Ask questions, get answers, request data to analyze, see beautiful astrophotography from some of our participants, and more.
- Participate in the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) Exoplanet Section Forum
Exoplanet Watch Community Highlights
Member of the Month
In every Exoplanet Watch Monthly Newsletter, we highlight a "Member of the Month". If you are interested in nominating yourself or someone else, please email us at exoplanetwatch@jpl.nasa.gov. To sign up for the Monthly Newsletters, please follow the instructions here.
Amanda Johnson
My name is Amanda, and I am a UX researcher and doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I recently had the fantastic opportunity to lead a team of UX researchers to develop recommendations for the Exoplanet Watch website. Our goal for this project was to learn how we can deliver the best possible experience for the users while making the Exoplanet Watch website as straightforward to use as possible.
As a UX researcher, I conceptualize ideas to bring simplicity and user-friendliness to complex design challenges. With this project, we collaborated with stakeholders to learn their needs and evaluate user requirements and then conducted various user tests to gather detailed information from users through qualitative and quantitative means.
I chose to work with the Exoplanet Watch website to promote interdisciplinary learning and assist in making data more easily accessible so everyone could do fantastic science.
Astrophoto of the Month
In every Exoplanet Watch Monthly Newsletter, we highlight an "Astrophoto of the Month" taken by one of our members. If you are interested in having one of your images highlighted, please email us at exoplanetwatch@jpl.nasa.gov. To sign up for the Monthly Newsletters, please follow the instructions here.
If you have any photos you would like to share with the Exoplanet Watch team, post them on our #astrophotography Slack channel. We would love to see them!
Andromeda Galaxy - MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network
The MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network took this photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy is also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 244. This photograph was taken on March 9, 2022.
