. 24/7 Space News .
STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Citizen scientists invited to join quest for new worlds
by Staff Writers
Tucson AZ (SPX) Feb 20, 2019

Artist rendering of the dust-encircled white dwarf star J0207, showing possible details of its mysterious multi-component disk. A volunteer from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project brought this surprising discovery to the attention of professional researchers. J0207 is now the oldest and coldest white dwarf known to harbor warm dust, challenging astronomers to reimagine scenarios for the long-term evolution of planetary systems.

The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project re-launches this week, with a call to volunteer citizen scientists to join the search for cold worlds near the Sun. With its newly revamped online interface and equipped with twice as much data as before, the project offers new opportunities to discover planets lurking yet unseen in the outer reaches of the Solar System (e.g., Planet 9, Planet X) as well as cold nearby "failed stars" (a.k.a. brown dwarfs). The re-launch coincides with the publication of the project's latest discovery: a record-setting white dwarf star encircled by mysterious dusty rings that challenge astronomers to rethink the long-term evolution of planetary systems.

With Backyard Worlds, available through the Zooniverse web portal, citizen scientists use images from NASA's WISE mission to uncover previously overlooked objects in the Sun's local cosmic neighborhood. The WISE satellite is currently surveying the entire sky at infrared wavelengths.

WISE's infrared sensitivity has the unrivaled potential to reveal extremely cold and faint new neighbors of the Sun, some of which may reside closer to us than even the nearest known star, Proxima Centauri. Such neighbors would most likely be brown dwarfs colder than room temperature, of which only a few tantalizing examples are currently known to exist.

It Takes a Village - Crowd-sourced Mining of Vast Astronomical Maps
Nearby celestial objects appear to move against the backdrop of more distant stars and galaxies, and that relative motion is used to identify members of the Sun's local neighborhood.

But no lone astronomer could single-handedly study all of the WISE images by eye to find these cold worlds; and a completely automated search is not possible due to noise and artifacts in the WISE images. Backyard Worlds' solution is an online interface that presents large cohorts of volunteers with animated "flipbooks" of WISE images in which to visually search for moving objects.

"Professional researchers routinely use supercomputers and machine learning, but there's still no substitute for the human eye when it comes to recognizing subtle motions in astronomical images," said Backyard Worlds co-founder Aaron Meisner, an astronomer at the NSF's National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

The crowd-sourced approach works. Since the project's inception two years ago, Backyard Worlds volunteers have discovered more than a thousand cold, nearby brown dwarfs - more than one per day!

Finding the Unexpected: an Ancient White Dwarf with Enigmatic Dust Rings
Alongside its re-launch, Backyard Worlds also announces its latest discovery, a surprising object unlike anything the team expected to find. Whereas most Backyard Worlds discoveries have been brown dwarfs, this newly published member of the solar neighborhood is a white dwarf - the faint, dense remnant of a stellar death long ago.

The white dwarf in question - LSPM J0207+3331, or J0207 for short - is unusually bright in WISE images, indicating that it's encircled by a warm, dusty circumstellar disk. Such disks are thought to result from the ongoing breakup of small rocky planetesimals in orbit around the white dwarf. But with an age of roughly 3 billion years, J0207 is colder and nearly three times older than any other white dwarf known to harbor such a disk.

The peculiar infrared properties of J0207 were first reported to Backyard Worlds researchers by citizen scientist Melina Thevenot of Germany.

"This white dwarf is so old that whatever process is feeding material into its ring must operate on billion-year timescales," said John Debes, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and lead author of the J0207 study co-authored by Thevenot. "Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve."

Adding to this puzzle, the J0207 disk may be composed of more than one distinct ring-like component, an arrangement never before seen in circumstellar material surrounding a white dwarf.

Critical follow-up of J0207 was obtained by Backyard Worlds collaborator Adam Burgasser, a professor at UC San Diego, using the Keck II telescope on the Mauna Kea summit in Hawaii, one of the world's premier astronomical observing facilities. "That is a really motivating aspect of the search," said Thevenot, one of more than 150,000 citizen scientists who have contributed to the Backyard Worlds project. "The researchers will move their telescopes to look at worlds you have discovered. What I especially enjoy, though, is the interaction with the awesome research team. Everyone is very kind, and they are always trying to make the best out of our discoveries."

More Discoveries in Store!
The newly upgraded Backyard Worlds interface is expected to unleash a new wave of additional discoveries. The rebooted edition doubles the amount of WISE data that can be examined, provides access to additional visualization resources, and incorporates upgraded image processing algorithms that better remove artifacts.

"The synergy of careful human scrutiny combined with massive computations has fueled the remarkable discoveries made by Backyard Worlds volunteers," said Meisner. "I'm excited to see what happens next!"

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the University of California San Diego, Bucknell University, the University of Oklahoma, and Zooniverse, a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the internet.

Research Report: "A 3 Gyr White Dwarf with Warm Dust Discovered via the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project," Debes et al. 2019, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.


Related Links
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It


Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly


paypal only
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal


STELLAR CHEMISTRY
New sky map detects hundreds of thousands of unknown galaxies
Leiden, Netherlands (SPX) Feb 20, 2019
An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published the first phase of a major new radio sky survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope. The survey reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve. A special issue of the scientific journal Astronomy and Astrophysics is dedicated to the first twenty ... read more

Comment using your Disqus, Facebook, Google or Twitter login.



Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Space behaviour focus of Expedition 58

Technology developed in Brazil will be part of ISS

Russia sketches out "Unpiloted Tourist Space Yacht" concept that would graze space

Five future astronauts and a teacher you need to know

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Raptor engine beats Russian RD-180 record in combustion chamber pressure says Musk

Arianespace orbits two telecommunications satellites on first Ariane 5 launch of 2019

SpaceX no-load test delayed

Launch of Unmanned US Dragon 2 Spacecraft to ISS Set for March 2

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Weather on Mars: Chilly with a chance of 'dust devils'

InSight is the Newest Mars weather service

Northwestern study of analog crews in isolation reveals weak spots for Mission to Mars

Mars Rover Opportunity Ends Mission After 15 Years

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
China improves Long March-6 rocket for growing commercial launches

Seed of moon's first sprout: Chinese scientists' endeavor

China to send over 50 spacecraft into space via over 30 launches in 2019

China to deepen lunar exploration: space expert

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
18m pounds for OneWeb satellite constellation to deliver global communications

Arianespace to orbit the first six satellites of the OneWeb constellation

RIT faculty part of NASA's $242 million SPHEREx mission

Ball Aerospace to Build Spacecraft for NASA's SPHEREx Mission

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Blacksmiths keep alive the flame of China's molten steel 'fireworks'

Malaysia to end bauxite mining ban despite environment fears

New technology captures movement of quantum particles with unprecedented resolution

Solid-state catalysis: Fluctuations clear the way

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
NIST 'Astrocomb' Opens New Horizons for Planet-Hunting Telescope

Discovery of Planets Around Cool Stars Enabled with Hobby-Eberly Telescope

NASA Selects New Mission to Explore Origins of Universe

New NASA research consortium to tackle life's origins

STELLAR CHEMISTRY
Tiny Neptune Moon Spotted by Hubble May Have Broken from Larger Moon

Ultima Thule is more pancake than snowman, NASA scientists discover

New Horizons' evocative farewell glance at Ultima Thule

Sodium, Not Heat, Reveals Volcanic Activity on Jupiter's Moon Io









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.