koi-351-07
This graph shows how the light from the star changes as the 7th planet candidate in the system passes in front of it. The red and blue points are the actual observations of the star’s brightness taken by the Kepler Telescope, and the black line is a model which had been fitted to the observations to calculate the measurements of the planet, such as its size and orbital period.

The Planet Hunters project is delighted to announce the submission of a new paper ‘Planet Hunters VI: The First Kepler Seven Planet Candidate‘ to the Astronomical Journal for peer review. The most interesting result presented in the paper is the discovery of a seventh planet candidate in the KOI-351 Kepler system. The Kepler Mission had already found six candidates in this system, but their automated search did not pick up the seventh object which was discovered by citizen scientist on Planet Hunters. It appears to be about the same size as Neptune, have a year that lasts 125 days, and is half the distance from its star than the Earth is from the Sun. If confirmed, this will become the most populated transiting planet system known. The paper also announces the discovery of 13 other planet candidates.

To find out more, read the original post on the Planet Hunters blog, and if you would like to try and find a planet yourself, have a go here http://www.planethunters.org/