Non-astronomer may have found an exoplanet 218 light-years away using Claude Code
specbug · reddit · 2026-10-18
A non-astronomer on Reddit, inspired by an earlier post, used Claude Code and may have discovered an exoplanet candidate in a system 218 light-years away: the candidate is 3.75x Earth's size, seen in four transits captured by TESS from 2019-2026, with pre-registered predictions for future transits overlapping TESS monitoring in Feb 2027.
- Blog post, preprint, data/code, and pre-registered test published via Zenodo DOIs; code on GitHub (specbug/ad-astra)
- Claude side: everything ran in a single Claude Code cloud session on the Pro plan over nine days across several usage-limit resets; Fable 5.1 drafted the plan, Opus 5.5 executed the entire analysis, Fable independently checked the final results
- The author stresses it is a candidate, not a confirmed planet; official listing (CTOI) requires a peer-reviewed paper, and they're seeking journal and arXiv endorsement help
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