Backyard Worlds

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Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
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Scientific project for volunteers
operator Backyard Worlds team
editorial staff Backyard Worlds team
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http://www.backyardworlds.org

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 , also known as Backyard Worlds or BYW , is a NASA- funded Citizen Science project that is part of the Zooniverse website. The aim of the project is to search for new brown dwarfs and stars with low mass in the direct vicinity of the sun . The project could also find the hypothetical planet nine . The lead scientist on the project is Marc Kuchner , an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center .

history

Backyard Worlds opened to the public on February 15, 2017. This was shortly before the 87th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto , which was considered the ninth planet until it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Since this reclassification, there have been signs that there might be another planet in the outer solar system beyond the Kuiper Belt . This hypothetical planet is called Planet Nine . This planet would be so far from the sun that it would only reflect a small fraction of the sunlight, too little for most astronomical surveys . However, models of the planetary atmosphere of Planet Nine indicate that the hypothetical planet would be detectable in the infrared range with the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. Due to the motion effects of parallax and proper motion , Planet Nine would move in a characteristic way between images of the same section of sky for different periods of time. In addition to planet nine, the movement of other objects is also visible, such as that of the brown dwarfs.

The volunteers are guided through a tutorial and do not require any prior knowledge of astronomy. The volunteers browse flip-book- style animations , which consist of specially created infrared images recorded by WISE in the 3.4 and 4.6 micrometer wavelength range . The images contain artifacts of the instrument and are affected by noise , which disrupts the automatic detection of moving objects and makes this task ideal for human perception, which is less affected by the noise.

The project is subsidized through NASA's Astrophysics Data Analysis Program until 2020 .

In November 2018 the project was "rebooted" (restarted), with new images and reduced noise.

During the course of the project, volunteers themselves created an online tool to display flip-book-style animations and search for them using the coordinates . Like the project, the tool uses images from WISE.

Discoveries

Artistic impression of LSPM J0207 + 3331

In June 2017 it was announced that the project has made its first discovery: a brown dwarf at a distance of 34 parsecs (111 light years ) called WISEA 1101 + 5400 and the spectral class T5.5. A publication that made the discovery known appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and Backyard Worlds was the record holder for the project with the fastest publication from the start of the project to the first publication for a Zooniverse project.

In October 2018, a participant in the LSPM project discovered J0207 + 3331 , the oldest and coldest white dwarf with a disk of dust . The white dwarf is 3 billion years old. The white dwarf is surrounded by two dust rings with different temperatures. This star was examined with the Keck telescope and is the subject of further investigations.

The project found 1035 candidates who could be brown dwarfs. 131 of them were spectroscopically examined and confirmed by the project scientists. 70 dwarfs with the spectral type T and 61 dwarfs with the spectral type L were thus confirmed. Of these, 55 are closer than 20 parsecs to the solar system. The candidates also include around 100 candidates who could be Y-dwarfs . (As of July 2019)

The project found a binary system consisting of two brown dwarfs, which are particularly far apart with about 341 astronomical units . Similar systems have been discovered for young brown dwarfs, however W2150AB is an older system. The system has a combination of age, low gravitational energy, and low mass of the components that make it special. It is also one of the few binary brown dwarfs whose components can be resolved with ground telescopes , which makes it easier to explore the objects.

In January 2020, the project announced the discovery of a Y-dwarf at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society . WISE J0830 + 2837 is the project's first Y dwarf with a temperature of around 350  Kelvin (77 ° C).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Backyard Worlds team
  2. ↑ a b c NASA needs your help: Search for Planet 9. In: Grenzwissenschaft-aktuell.de. February 15, 2017, accessed on February 7, 2020 (German).
  3. ^ Rob Garner: NASA-funded website Lets Public Search for New Nearby Worlds. February 15, 2017, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Robert Lewis: Backyard Worlds: Planet March 9, 13, 2017, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Solar system: references to the ninth planet are increasing. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Jonathan J. Fortney, Mark S. Marley, Gregory Laughlin, Nadine Nettelmann, Caroline V. Morley: The Hunt for Planet Nine: Atmosphere, Spectra, Evolution, and Detectability . In: ApJL . tape 824 , no. 2 , June 2016, ISSN  0004-637X , p. L25 , doi : 10.3847 / 2041-8205 / 824/2 / L25 ( harvard.edu [accessed February 7, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 >> About -Zooniverse. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 >> Classify - Zooniverse. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Author marckuchner2014: We Love You! And Happy Anniversary! In: Backyard Worlds: Planet February 9, 14, 2018, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Author marckuchner2014: The Reboot Is Here! In: Backyard Worlds: Planet November 9, 16, 2018, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  11. ↑ ASCL.net - WiseView: Visualizing motion and variability of faint WISE sources. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Author marckuchner2014: Our First Paper: the Discovery of Brown Dwarf WISEA 1101 + 5400. In: Backyard Worlds: Planet June 9 , 2017, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  13. ^ Marc J. Kuchner, Jacqueline K. Faherty, Adam C. Schneider, Aaron M. Meisner, Joseph C. Filippazzo: The First Brown Dwarf Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project . In: ApJL . tape 841 , no. 2 , June 2017, ISSN  0004-637X , p. L19 , doi : 10.3847 / 2041-8213 / aa7200 ( harvard.edu [accessed February 7, 2020]).
  14. ↑ Nadja Podbregar: Ringed white dwarf poses a riddle . In: scinexx | The knowledge magazine . February 20, 2019 ( scinexx.de [accessed February 7, 2020]).
  15. ↑ GMS: Volunteer Discovers Record-Setting White Dwarf Star. Retrieved February 7, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Author marckuchner2014: One Hundred Thirty-One Brown Dwarfs. In: Backyard Worlds: Planet July 9, 15, 2019, accessed February 7, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Jacqueline K. Faherty, Sam Goodman, Dan Caselden, Guillaume Colin, Marc J. Kuchner: WISE2150-7520AB: A very low mass, wide co-moving brown dwarf system discovered through the citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 . In: arXiv . November 2019, p. arXiv: 1911.04600 ( harvard.edu [accessed February 7, 2020]).
  18. ↑ D. Bardalez Gagliuffi, J. Faherty, Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Collaboration, A. Schneider, A. Meisner: WISE J0830 + 2837: the first Y dwarf from Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 . In: AAS . tape 52 , January 2020, p. 132.06 ( harvard.edu [accessed February 7, 2020]).