APOD and General Astronomy Discussion Forum
https://asterisk.apod.com/
Citizen scientists using the NASA-sponsored website DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set of targets for future planet-hunting missions.Click to play embedded YouTube video.
By combing through objects identified in an infrared survey made with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, Disk Detective aims to find two types of developing planetary environments: YSO disks, which are less than 5 million years old and contains large quantities of gas, and debris disks, which tend to be older than 5 million years, and contain belts of rocky or icy debris.
Computer searches already have identified some objects seen by the WISE survey as potential dust-rich disks. But software can't distinguish them from other infrared-bright sources, such as galaxies, interstellar dust clouds and asteroids. There may be thousands of potential planetary systems in the WISE data, but the only way to know for sure is to inspect each source by eye. ...