Citizen scientists have discovered over 3,000 new brown dwarfs, doubling the known population of these cosmic objects.
NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has announced a major breakthrough: over 3,000 new brown dwarfs have been identified, effectively doubling the number of these celestial bodies known to science. The findings were published in The Astronomical Journal, led by astronomer Adam Schneider.
"There is approximately one brown dwarf for every three or four stars near the Sun."
What are Brown Dwarfs?
Brown dwarfs are gas balls, roughly the size of Jupiter, but they are less massive than stars. They are often called "failed stars" because they lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion.
A Monumental Citizen Science Effort
The discoveries were made possible by roughly 200,000 volunteers who analyzed images from NASA’s WISE and NEOWISE-R missions. Using the Zooniverse platform, volunteers "blinked" images taken over a 16-year period to identify objects that had moved. Some volunteers even went a step further, building their own search tools and software to aid in the hunt.
New Discoveries and Insights
The expanded catalog includes some rare and remarkable finds:
- Extreme T subdwarfs and ultra-cool objects were identified, providing new data points for astronomical models.
- One notable discovery is a brown dwarf with apparent aurorae, a phenomenon rarely seen on such objects.
- This data significantly improves our understanding of the mass distribution in the Milky Way and helps create a more complete map of the solar neighborhood.
A Community of Authors
Of the 75 paper authors, 61 are volunteers. Two other authors began as volunteers on the project and have since gone on to pursue professional careers in astronomy.