Citizen scientist leads discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binaries using data archive

by National Science Foundation

A citizen scientist has searched NSF’s NOIRLab’s catalog of 4 billion celestial objects, known as NOIRLab Source Catalog DR2, to reveal brown dwarfs with companions.

His intensive investigation led to the discovery of 34 ultracool dwarf binary systems, nearly doubling previously known samples.

Brown dwarfs lie somewhere between the most massive planets and the smallest stars. Lacking the mass needed to sustain nuclear reactions in their core, brown dwarfs loosely resemble cooling embers on a huge scale.

Their faintness and relatively small sizes make them difficult to identify.

Data from sensitive telescopes have enabled the discovery of several thousand objects but just a small subset have been identified as binaries.

The difficulty in observing these faint embers also means that astronomers are still unsure how often brown dwarfs have companions.

To help find brown dwarfs, the astronomers of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project have previously turned to a worldwide network of more than 100,000 volunteer citizen scientists who scrutinized telescope images to identify the subtle motion of brown dwarfs against background stars.

Despite the abilities of machine learning and supercomputers, the human eye is still a unique resource when it comes to scouring telescope images for moving objects.

“The Backyard Worlds project has fostered a diverse community of talented volunteers,” commented Aaron Meisner, an astronomer at NSF’s NOIRLab and co-founder of Backyard Worlds.

“One hundred fifty thousand volunteers across the globe have participated in Backyard Worlds, among which a few hundred ‘super users’ perform ambitious self-directed research projects.”

One such “super sleuth”—citizen scientist Frank Kiwy—embarked on a research project involving the NOIRLab Source Catalog DR2, a catalog of nearly 4 billion unique celestial objects that contains all of the public imaging data in NOIRLab’s Astro Data Archive.

By searching the data for objects with the color of brown dwarfs, Kiwy was able to find more than 2500 potential ultracool dwarfs lurking in the archive.

These were then scrutinized for hints of comoving companions, yielding a total of 34 systems comprising a white dwarf or low-mass star with an ultracool dwarf companion.

Kiwy then led a team of professional astrophysicists in publishing these discoveries in a scientific paper.

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