The researchers used an automated software developed at Princeton University known as Vespa that allows scientists to efficiently determine if a Kepler signal is caused by a planet. Vespa computes the chances that a Kepler signal actually came from a certain type of planet. Automated software such as Vespa is necessary because of the sheer amount of Kepler data and the similarity that some planetary signals — especially those of larger planets — have to other objects such as stars that orbit each other. The graph above shows the type of planets newly verified by Vespa (orange) compared to the number of those planets previously confirmed (blue). Vespa more likely verified smaller planets because of their prevalence and unambiguous signal; signals thought to come from less common Jupiter-sized planets were more likely to actually emanate from stars. Illustration credit: NASA.
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