NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has detected more than 7,000 planets around other stars so far, but only a fraction have been confirmed as real discoveries; the rest could be intriguing planets waiting to be discovered or just noise. Unfortunately, neither TESS nor other professional telescopes have the time to examine every suspect in detail.

This is where amateur astronomers come to the rescue.

Amateur astronomers often take on this time-consuming task by using backyard telescopes to make the follow-up observations needed to confirm the existence of candidate planets. And in doing so, they also spur new research. In fact, a group of citizen scientists, including a high school student from California, confirmed the existence of one of the TESS candidate planets using backyard telescopes. Earth is part of a relatively new class of exoplanets known as “hot” Jupiters.

The red-hot planet is in a transitional phase between a “cold” Jupiter like our own, and a “hot” Jupiter, a type of exoplanet that orbits very close to its star. Astronomers say piecing together the history of the newly discovered world will allow them to learn more about how giant planets evolve, and in particular, whether hot Jupiters form very close to their stars or farther away before migrating inward. Ultimately, learning about all types of Jupiters could reveal more about the history of our own Jupiter and even the Solar System as a whole.

The planet, called TIC 393818343 b and located about 300 light-years from Earth, was confirmed by two public networks of scientists: the UNISTELLAR Network and NASA Exoplanet Watch. The teams used their own telescopes to observe the faint light from a nearby star. Such a dimming is a sign that an orbiting planet is passing between its star and our detectors on Earth. The first “transit” was detected by the UNISTELLAR team, who then predicted when the next transit would occur and alerted NASA’s Exoplanet Watch team to help observe the star within the predicted timeframe, NASA said.

Indeed, the networks detected two more transits, confirming the planet’s existence and demonstrating the scientific impact of the emerging field of citizen science.