Redditor Uses ChatGPT to Surface Uncatalogued Exoplanet Candidate in 17-Year-Old Kepler Data
kuberwt · reddit · 2026-10-18
A Redditor built a pipeline with ChatGPT/Codex to detect periodic stellar dimming and found an uncatalogued transit signal in Kepler data: KIC 5689121, a red dwarf 970 light-years away in Lyra, dims every 13.77 days, implying a planet 2.5–3x Earth's radius.
- Likely Neptune-like atmosphere; orbit under 1/4 of Mercury's distance, a "year" under 14 days
- Receives 5x Earth's sunlight; the light left the star around 1050 AD
- The candidate sits just 7.1 arcseconds from a much brighter neighbor, likely why it went unnoticed
TRICERATOPS score is 6.9%, so IR/AO/Keck follow-up is needed to confirm. Full archive published at kuber.studio/planethunt/.
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