Citizen Scientists Discover Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs

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Citizen Scientists Discover Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Aaron Meisner (NSF’s NOIRLab) [email protected] ; (650) 714-8643 Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Collaboration CatWISE Team NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld the time-honored quest to find our Sun’s closest neighbors NASA/Penn State University the time-honored quest to find our Sun’s closest neighbors discovered recently by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission NASA/Penn State University DESI imaging processed a quarter petabyte of raw WISE data to create the deepest, most comprehensive all-sky infrared maps the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project • Launched in February 2017 via Zooniverse • More than 7 million user ‘classifications’ • Over 64,000 registered users • Roughly 150,000 unique contributors • Participants from all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and DC • 167 countries represented today’s news: best ever 3D map of brown dwarfs in the Sun’s cosmic neighborhood Lead author: J. Davy Kirkpatrick (Caltech/IPAC) Video: Jackie Faherty (AMNH)/OpenSpace 3,000 Backyard Worlds brown dwarf discoveries: more than 2 per day! Video: Jonathan Gagné (Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium) surprise: Sun’s nearest neighbors even weirder than previously thought WISE 0830+2837, prior literature discovered by Backyard Backyard Worlds, Worlds citizen scientist CatWISE Dan Caselden – the WISE 0855, the second coldest known coldest known brown dwarf? brown dwarf, still stands alone! 0830+2837 Bardalez Gagliuffi et al. (2020) warmest coolest observing citizen scientist discoveries with premier telescopes Gemini NASA IRTF Blanco Spitzer Keck Hubble crucial distance estimates are based on Spitzer Space Telescope follow-up (Kirkpatrick et al., in press) conclusion • With help from DESI imaging sky maps and citizen scientists, we’ve published the best ever 3D census of nearby brown dwarfs. • Our discoveries would not have been possible without WISE and DESI Legacy Surveys ‘open data’ practices. • We could still use much more help from members of the public! https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2105/ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/citizen-scientists-help-create-3d-map-of-cosmic-neighborhood [email protected] ; (650) 714-8643.

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