The Cool Neighbors logo, designed by Matteo Gulla. Feel free to share it and help spread the word!
Happy first week of Summer! We’re eager to begin the season by announcing an exciting new project: Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors. My name is Grady Robbins, a core member of the Cool Neighbors team, and I am thrilled to introduce our project. Stay with us to learn more about our team, the project, and how you can participate in exciting discoveries of extreme brown dwarfs.
What is Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors?
Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors focuses on finding brown dwarfs in the Sun’s cosmic neighborhood through a crowdsourced approach. Brown dwarfs are solitary substellar objects with masses between those of the most massive planets (like Jupiter) and the least massive stars (known as red dwarfs). Although brown dwarfs lack sufficient mass to sustain hydrogen fusion, as a star would, brown dwarfs still glow faintly, slowly giving off the heat from their initial formation over billions of years. Consequently, brown dwarfs emit only a small amount of light, primarily infrared light.
You might wonder why it’s so crucial to discover brown dwarfs. Here’s the exciting part: their atmospheres closely resemble those of giant exoplanets but without a brighter host star’s interference — brown dwarf atmospheres can have clouds and water! Studying these atmospheres can deepen our understanding of the development of molecules such as water and methane which are vital for the emergence of life. Some brown dwarfs may even be rogue planets ejected from their star systems! Unraveling the mysteries of these cosmic nomads provides insight into the formation of star and planet systems.
Dramatic Dwarf Discoveries
The Backyard Worlds project has already achieved remarkable breakthroughs in the study of brown dwarfs, leading to the identification of new brown dwarf classes! Recently, the project made sensational discoveries, including the identification of two extraordinary T-type subdwarfs and an intriguing new Y-dwarf. Notably, extreme T-type subdwarfs are incredibly rare due to their exceptionally low metallicity, which explains why the discoveries of the first extreme T-type brown dwarfs (WISEA 0414−5854 and WISEA 1810−1010) were not made until 2020 by the Backyard Worlds project!
One of the most remarkable findings was the first Y-dwarf (WISE 1534–1043), fittingly named “The Accident”. This discovery, stumbled upon by citizen scientist Dan Caselden through a program he built, drew significant attention. Y-dwarfs represent the coldest of brown dwarfs, making them particularly challenging to detect. The Accident, likely metal-poor and old, has even been selected for observation by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It’s fascinating to think that a brown dwarf you discover could potentially be observed by JWST!
Cool Neighbors hopes to find more bizarre brown dwarf targets, like The Accident, for JWST to observe. Credit: ESA
The Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors project is led by Dr. Aaron Meisner, well-known for his extensive search in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 by utilizing data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Developed by NOIRLab interns Austin Humphreys, Noah Schapera, and myself, the project underwent a successful beta test prior to launch, heightening expectations for future results! The project is funded and supported by NASA’s Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP) and NSF’s NOIRLab, giving a solid foundation. This support has even facilitated the creation of multiple internships and enabled new research in astronomy!
The Accident is a prime example of the types of brown dwarfs that Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors aims to uncover. While The Accident was stumbled upon, the advanced search capabilities offered by Cool Neighbors are expected to reveal many more like it! The project benefits from nine years of WISE observations, enabling the discovery of even fainter brown dwarfs than ever before! Cool Neighbors uses citizen science to sift through telescope data and identify brown dwarfs hidden among stars, galaxies, and detector noise. Although the machine-learning algorithm significantly reduces the search effort to find potential brown dwarfs, it can still be deceived by artifacts and noise that mimic movement (which is precisely why your contribution is crucial)! With your help, we can potentially uncover hundreds to thousands of previously unknown substellar objects!
Search Kickoff: Where to Begin?
To start searching for brown dwarfs, visit our website at http://coolneighbors.org and click on the “CLASSIFY” tab. This opens a classification workflow, enabling you to carefully analyze images and determine if the objects you see might be brown dwarfs. The interactive interface allows you to zoom, pan, and animate to detect movement. We provide a comprehensive tutorial and a field guide to enhance your understanding and assist you in making remarkable celestial discoveries.
When you identify a potential brown dwarf, we encourage you to use the powerful astronomical databases SIMBAD and VizieR to check if the object has been published before. These databases, commonly used by professional astronomers, help determine whether your find is a new discovery or a known object. If you find a mover not listed in SIMBAD, we’d be thrilled to hear about it through our submission form or on our Zooniverse Talk page.
Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors offers an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge scientific research and be part of the journey to understand the mysteries of our cosmic neighborhood. Explore our project and leave your mark on the frontiers of scientific discovery! Together, we can unveil the secrets hidden within our cosmic neighborhood and expand our understanding of the universe we call home.
Hope to see you out there,
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 