Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors

Brown dwarfs are balls of gas similar to Jupiter that never had enough mass to become stars. Many of the Sun’s nearest neighbors in space are brown dwarfs! But these objects are faint and hard to find, so the smallest ones remain mysterious and elusive.

Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors is on the hunt for brown dwarfs near the Sun. The team has done what it can with computers to find them in data from NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WISE) space telescope. Now they need your help to find the real brown dwarfs among the top candidates.

This project is also available in French and German.

Go to Project Website

ages

18 and up

division

Universe

where

Online

launched

2023

This artist's rendition of exoplanet VHS 1256 b shows a dimly glowing, Jupiter-like planet with cloud features in its atmosphere.

This illustration conceptualizes the swirling clouds identified by the James Webb Space Telescope in the atmosphere of exoplanet VHS 1256 b. The planet is about 40 light-years away and orbits two stars that are locked in their own tight rotation. Its clouds, which are filled with silicate dust, are constantly rising, mixing, and moving during its 22-hour day.

Illustration: NASA/ESA/CSA/Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

What you’ll do

View sequences of images from NASA’s WISE telescope and learn how to recognize faint moving objects in these images.
When you see one, click “Yes.”
Connect with other people with similar interests via Zooniverse TALK bulletin boards.
You can also submit interesting objects directly to the science team via Google Form. Instructions are here.

Requirements

Time: 5-15 minutes to complete the tutorial
Equipment: Web-connected device.
Knowledge: None. In project tutorial provides all instruction needed.

Get started!

Visit the project website.
Click “Classify” and complete the tutorial to learn how to identify, classify, and or circle vortices in images.
Start your search for a never-before-seen brown dwarf star!

Learn More

Are you fascinated by the hunt for new objects in the universe? This project is your invitation to go as far as you like into the exciting world of astronomical discovery! New space telescopes, open data practices, and welcoming communities of professional and amateur scientists (like Cool Neighbors’) all mean that making a unique astronomical discovery is within reach of anyone with a hunger - and a little patience! - to do so.

Join the project and see where it takes you!
Learn more on the project’s Research page.

Join the Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors project, and be the first to spot an undiscovered brown dwarf! (Credit: Matteo Gulla.)

A brick-red spherical body, the artist’s rendition of a brown dwarf, floats against the black of deep space liberally dotted with stars. The body itself is striped with roughly two dozen narrow longitudinal bands of fiery oranges and yellows alternating with cooler browns. Swirls in the orange-yellow-stripes give the impression of a chaotic, swirling atmosphere.

If you could see a brown dwarf star in person, it might resemble Jupiter, or might have a purple-red glow like the artist’s rendering in this image.

NASA/JPL Caltech

In this short, highly pixelated movie clip the background is a field of light grey and brown pixels that appear to flicker. Several steady black or dark grey spots of 3-10 pixels are scattered across the image. A darker brown spot appears to move from lower left to upper right in the middle of the of the image. This is an example of a real moving object and just might be a brown dwarf.

At Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors, you’ll view what are essentially short time lapse movies of promising objects found by computer algorithms. Some of these will be real moving objects like the one shown above. Others will be artifacts. The project tutorial and field guide will help you learn to distinguish the real from the pretenders.

Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors