{"id":13915,"date":"2017-02-16T17:52:29","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T22:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=13915"},"modified":"2017-02-16T17:52:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T22:52:29","slug":"join-search-for-unknown-objects-in-and-beyond-our-own-solar-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=13915","title":{"rendered":"Join search for unknown objects in and beyond our own solar system"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASA is sponsoring a new citizen-scientist project hosted at Zooniverse<\/a> called\u00a0 Backyard Worlds: Planet 9:<\/a><\/p>\n

NASA-funded Website Lets the Public Search for New Nearby Worlds<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This artist’s concept illustrates a close-up view of a cool brown dwarf. Objects like this, drifting just beyond our solar system, have been imaged by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and could be discovered by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech \u203a Full image and caption<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space. A new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9<\/a>, lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer<\/a> (WISE) mission. The movies highlight objects that have gradually moved across the sky.<\/p>\n

“There are just over four light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored,” said lead researcher Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

WISE scanned the entire sky between 2010 and 2011, producing the most comprehensive survey at mid-infrared wavelengths currently available. With the completion of its primary mission, WISE was shut down in 2011. It was then reactivated in 2013 and given a new mission assisting NASA’s efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are asteroids and comets on orbits that bring them into the vicinity of Earth’s orbit. The mission was renamed the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).<\/p>\n