Not Planets, Not Stars: NASA Volunteers Doubled the Number of Known Brown Dwarfs

What happens when hundreds of thousands of volunteers team up with NASA to explore the sky? In the case of Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, thousands of new brown dwarfs.

NASA citizen scientists have helped discover more than 3,000 brown dwarfs, effectively doubling the known population of these mysterious objects over the past decade. These discoveries are helping astronomers better understand the boundary between planets and stars, revealing rare ultra-cool worlds, extreme T subdwarfs, and even brown dwarfs that may host aurorae.

Dr. Lauren Sgro and special guest Dr. Adam C. Schneider (United States Naval Observatory) discuss how citizen scientists made these discoveries, why brown dwarfs are so difficult to detect, and what this growing catalog is teaching us about our galactic neighborhood.

Press release: https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/nasa-volunteers-double-known-population-of-brown-dwarfs/

Paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae5b60

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9