Citizen science projects are a great way for anyone to be involved in the scientific process. Average, everyday folks have discovered things like supernovae, previously unseen craters on the Moon and Mars and even new planets orbiting a distant star.
Now, you could be part of one of the most exciting quests yet: finding a mysterious, unseen planet in the far reaches of our own solar system. Last year, Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin found indirect evidence for the existence of a large planet, likely located out past Pluto, and since then, the search has been on. But so far, it has come up empty. And so, astronomers decided they would bring in a little help: You.
“Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 has the potential to unlock once-in-a-century discoveries, and it’s exciting to think they could be spotted first by a citizen scientist,” said UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher Aaron Meisner, who is helping to head up this latest citizen science project.
orange dot (upper left) in this loop of WISE images spanning five years. By viewing
movies like this, anyone can help discover more brown dwarfs or even a 9th planet. Credit: NASA/WISE.
People who sign on to the Backyard World: Planet 9 website will be basically using the same type of technique that was used to find the last planet discovered in our solar system, Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh used a special machine that systematically switched images on glass astronomical plates back and forth, looking for any objects in the night sky that ‘moved’ between the images.
For Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, users will view brief “flipbook” movies made from images captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. A faint spot seen moving through background stars might be a new and distant planet in our solar system. Or it could be a nearby brown dwarf star, which would be another exciting discovery.
WISE’s infrared images cover the entire sky about six times over. This has allowed astronomers to search the images for faint, glowing objects that change position over time, which means they are relatively close to Earth. Objects that produce their own faint infrared glow would have to be large, Neptune-size planets or brown dwarfs, which are slightly smaller than stars. WISE images have already turned up hundreds of previously unknown brown dwarfs, including the objects fairly close to us, so astronomers hope that the Backyard Worlds search will turn up a new nearest neighbor to our sun.
NASA wants to bring in all the humans it can for this search, because the human eye is much better than computers at seeing changes between images.
“Automated searches don’t work well in some regions of the sky, like the plane of the Milky Way galaxy, because there are too many stars, which confuses the search algorithm,” said Meisner.
“There are just over four light-years between Neptune, the farthest known planet in our solar system, and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored,” said NASA astronomer Marc Kuchner, the lead researcher and an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Because there’s so little sunlight, even large objects in that region barely shine in visible light. But by looking in the infrared, WISE may have imaged objects we otherwise would have missed.”
Check out Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 here, and give Universe Today the scoop when you make your big discovery!
You can find more info in the video below:
Source: UC Berkeley
This object should be referred to as Planet X, with “x” referring to the unknown. That is the traditional method of referring to a hypothesized but undiscovered planet. The term “Planet 9” is biased and controversial because it inherently denies the fact that the debate over the number of planets in our solar system remains ongoing. For planetary scientists who consider dwarf planets a subclass of planets, our solar system already has more than 9 planets. Furthermore, using the term “Planet 9” is disrespectful to Clyde Tombaugh, as Pluto is still considered by many to be the solar system’s ninth planet. The person who chose this term did so to promote their own agenda. I hope this project will decide to use the neutral term “Planet X.” Furthermore, if the object turns out to be a brown dwarf, it wouldn’t even be a planet, as brown dwarfs are the lowest in the stellar classification.
It would be interesting if the new planet, should it be found, has not cleared its orbit. It wouldn’t be considered a planet, even if it turns out to be quite large and massive.
When this planet is located it will be proof of the concept. We would have found it because of the fact that it cleared its orbit we just traced these cleared objects back to its source.
OK
IF this planet is located, there is no guarantee that it will have cleared its orbit, even if it has cleared some or most of its orbit.
Only a controversy to the small handful of people that think semantics=reality.