Mega RhexasPublic NASA TESS data
Plain language
A short tour of the search. The words are simple on purpose.
A planet can pass between us and its star. For a short while the star looks a tiny bit dimmer. Then it is bright again. That dimming is a transit.
NASA’s TESS mission watches a great many stars and writes down their brightness. Those records are public. Mega Rhexas searches them for transits.
Mega Rhexas reads public NASA TESS data. It is not part of NASA, and NASA has not endorsed it.
The program on your computer does four things, then starts again.
It downloads a few hundred stars. That is about a gigabyte.
It looks for a dip that repeats.
The result is much smaller than the star files.
After a successful send, the big files go away.
You can close the laptop. The search pauses. When you are back, you can continue.
Every batch of stars goes to two different people. Each one searches it alone.
The batch counts only when both see the same dip. The timing, the strength, and the depth have to match.
If they do not match, neither person gets credit for that try. The stars are checked again.
One person working alone cannot finish a batch. It waits for a second person.
A star with a repeating dip that passes the checks is called a candidate.
Every candidate here is unverified. It is not a confirmed planet. Astronomers still have to study it.
This site does not announce a discovery. A candidate stays unverified until astronomers confirm it.
You choose the pace on your own computer. It does not change anyone else’s search.
The computer rests between stars. It keeps the batch it already has. It stays quiet so you can keep working.
The usual pace. This is how hard the program runs when you start it.
The computer works harder. Other programs may slow down. Use this when you are away from the keyboard.
A batch is about a gigabyte and is deleted after the result is sent. The program stops if the disk is almost full.
The big star files stay on your computer until they are deleted. They are not uploaded.
The server receives the small result: the dip measurements for that batch. It does not receive your photos, documents, or other files.
The leaderboard shows the display name you pick. It does not show your email.
Credit is a count of stars that two people agreed on.
The beta is invite-only for now.
The search settings, the file formats, and the exact agreement rules will live on their own page. That page is not written yet.
The short version is the rest of this page.
Create an account with your invite code, download the program, and link your computer.