{"slug": "vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets", "title": "Vibe Astronomy: Discovering Exoplanets", "summary": "A developer used Claude Code to search NASA TESS low-cadence photometry and identified two previously undocumented Earth-sized exoplanet candidates: TIC 370612437 in Cygnus, 158 light-years away, dimming 0.02% every 3.56 days, and HIP 114417 in Andromeda, 134 light-years away, dimming 0.03% every 4.93 days. The dips repeat 55 and 21 times respectively across four observing years (2019–2024) and appear in both NASA and MIT image-processing pipelines, though a faint neighboring eclipsing binary could mimic the signal, so the finds remain unconfirmed candidates pending submission to NASA's ExoFOP and a 2027–2028 TESS re-scan.", "body_md": "I may have found two new Earth-sized planets in our galaxy this morning!\n\nInspired by yesterday’s reddit thread on how someone used Claude Code to find a new planet, I spent this morning searching NASA TESS data on nearby stars that TESS scanned less thoroughly (at low cadence).\n\nTo my surprise the pipeline discovered two previously undocumented exoplanet candidates:\n\n• TIC 370612437 (Cygnus constellation, 158 light-years): dims by 0.02% every 3.56 days → ~1.0× Earth’s size.\n\n• HIP 114417 (Andromeda constellation, 134 ly): 0.03% every 4.93 days → ~1.1× Earth.\n\nThe method to find them is to search for periodic dims in light coming from a star when a planet passes in front of it. For both the candidate exoplanets, the dip repeats 55 and 21 times respectively across 4 separate observing years (2019-2024).\n\nThese are obviously tentative and unconfirmed, but several signals point to them being credible candidates:\n\n• same dip in NASA’s and MIT’s separate processing of the images\n\n• hide one year’s dip and predict its times from rest of the dips (matched in 3 of 4 years)\n\n• flip light curves to create fake signals and validate observed dips against it\n\nThe method and results were reviewed by independent agents: Codex and fresh Claude. Important caveat: a faint neighbouring pair of eclipsing stars could fake the dip, so these exoplanets remain candidates pending further verification.\n\nWhat’s next: report to NASA’s ExoFOP as Community TESS Objects of Interest, so astronomers can verify. The next scan of these stars via TESS will happen in Aug 2027 - Apr 2028, if the preregistered dip predictions hold up, these are indeed strong candidates.\n\nNicknames for these exoplanets: Aakanksha (Sanskrit: aspiration) and Orbit (well, Orbit)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets", "canonical_source": "https://invertedpassion.substack.com/p/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets", "published_at": "2026-10-09 09:33:10+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-09 09:52:31.828387+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-tools", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["NASA", "TESS", "Claude Code", "MIT", "ExoFOP", "Codex", "TIC 370612437", "HIP 114417"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/vibe-astronomy-discovering-exoplanets.jsonld"}}