JPL/ASU: Two Bizarre Brown Dwarfs Found with Citizen Scientists' Help

[bystander]

Two Bizarre Brown Dwarfs Found With Citizen Scientists’ Help
NASA | JPL-Caltech | 2020 July 10

This is an illustration of a brown dwarf. Despite their name, brown dwarfs would appear magenta or orange-red to the human eye if seen close up. Credits: Image courtesy of William Pendrill

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With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers have discovered two highly unusual brown dwarfs, balls of gas that are not massive enough to power themselves the way stars do.

Participants in the NASA-funded Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project helped lead scientists to these bizarre objects, using data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite along with all-sky observations collected between 2009 and 2011 under its previous moniker, WISE. Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is an example of “citizen science,” a collaboration between professional scientists and members of the public.

Scientists call the newly discovered objects “the first extreme T-type subdwarfs.” They weigh about 75 times the mass of Jupiter and clock in at roughly 10 billion years old. These two objects are the most planet-like brown dwarfs yet seen among the Milky Way’s oldest population of stars.

Astronomers hope to use these brown dwarfs to learn more about exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system. The same physical processes may form both planets and brown dwarfs. ...

Citizen Scientists Help Discover 2 Bizarre Brown Dwarfs in Milky Way
Arizona State University | 2020 Jul 10

WISEA J041451.67-585456.7 and WISEA J181006.18-101000.5:
The First Extreme T-type Subdwarfs? ~ Adam C. Schneider et al

• arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:2007.03836 > 08 Jul 2020

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Click to play embedded YouTube video.

NOIRLabAstro: 3D Map of Brown Dwarfs in the Sun’s Neighborhood

<<This video visualization depicts the newly published three-dimensional map of brown dwarfs (appearing as red dots) that have been discovered within 65 light-years of the Sun. The beginning of the video shows the location of the Earth at the center of the view, then zooms out into interstellar space, showing the spatial distribution of the brown dwarfs in multiple ways before returning back to the Solar System and Earth at the end.>>