BBC Show Stargazing Live Leads To Exoplanet Discovery

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @04:32PM from the comfort-of-your-own-home dept.

arnodf writes "Tonight BBC's show stargazing live ended after three days of live astronomy with comedian Dara Ó Briain and professor Brian Cox. Throughout the show they were trying to make the viewers help in finding an exoplanet via Zooniverse. Thanks to the program they managed to get 1,084,760 classifications in 48 hours and two volunteers discovered an exoplanet which now bears their name. From the planethunters website: 'Thanks to your help and BBC Stargazing, we managed 1,084,760 classifications in 48 hours. There's still more to do, and more discoveries to be made, so keep clicking!'"

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Re:I didn't know you could name them... by vikingpower · 2012-01-18 17:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Couldn't NASA get a bit of funding from people who wanted to bid on the rights to name a world? (Unlike copyrights, aren't celestial bodies named FOREVER?).
No, it couldn't. NASA has nothing to do with naming planets. NASA is a US government agency. The US is one among many countries in the world. Funding such an agency of such a country through such a mechanism would come close to the "sell me a star" or "sell me an acre of moonscape" con trick.

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