NASA Citizen scientists project discovers new cosmic neighbors outside Solar System

NASA Scientists have unveiled the presence of many heavenly bodies and astral components all around space. They keep finding new information about the vast space beyond our world. In this quest to find more information about what lies beyond Earth, a huge group of professional and citizen scientists have found out the presence of 95 objects known as brown dwarfs. 

Citizen scientists discover 95 brown dwarfs

Out of 95 objects known as the brown dwarfs, many are located within a few dozen light-years of the Sun. As per the Nasa-funded citizen science project and Backyard World's discovery, these dwarfs are well outside the solar system and this is the reason why they do not experience heat from the Sun, however, they still inhabit a region considered by many astronomers as our cosmic neighbourhood. The size of these heavenly bodies is considerably between the sizes of planets and stars.

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Image ~ NASA Science

These cosmic neighbours were discovered by a group of scientists through Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a NASA-funded citizen science project that is a collaboration between volunteers and professional scientists. According to the study published by NASA Science, "Backyard Worlds incorporates data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite along with all-sky observations collected between 2010 and 2011 under its previous moniker, WISE". The scientists also collected the data for the analysis from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope and the facilities of the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab.

The assistant scientist at NSF’s NOIRLab and the lead author of the study describing the brown dwarfs, Aaron Meisner explained the analysis by writing “​Vast modern datasets can unlock landmark discoveries, and it’s exciting that these could be spotted first by citizen scientists”. He also mentioned that these Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping the scientific understanding of our solar neighbourhood.​

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Importance of the Brown Dwarfs

Image ~ NASA

As per the NASA study, the cosmic neighbours of our Solar System, the brown dwarfs, are not huge and massive like stars, however, they are comparatively quite heavier than planets. Unlike the name, these cosmic neighbours appear magenta or orange-red to the observer. The brown dwarfs are extremely hot, even thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. Many of the newly discovered ones are colder than the boiling point of water. Some even approach the temperature of the Earth and are cool enough to harbour water clouds.

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To spot these brown dwarfs, scientists need telescopes such as NEOWISE and Spitzer because they small in diameter and therefore faint in visible light. They are visible through telescopes as they give off heat in the form of infrared light which is invisible to the human eye yet detectable by telescopes. However, these cold brown dwarfs found in this study, the infrared signal is also faint, so they are easier to find the closer they are to our solar system. Discovery of such celestial objects helps scientists to understand the mystery and history of the universe and these newly discovered brown dwarfs represent a long-sought missing link within the brown dwarf population.

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