The Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors citizen science project! Extending the search for brown dwarfs and rogue planets, our cool cosmic neighbors.
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ALT Plenary speaker Aaron Meisner, 245th AAS meeting, National Harbor, MD. January 2025. Photo by © CorporateEventImages/Phil McCarten 2025
ALT Logo for the Exoasteroids project showing a smiling asteroid cartoon zooming past a gassy planet past other rocky asteroids
ALT A grid of four views of the same part of space, each taken by a different telescope. The images have black backgrounds with white and blue blobs. From upper left and moving clockwise, the images were made by: unWISE w3, which is the brightest image, unWISE w1, which shows only three distinct white spots and two blue, Pan-STARRS g, which shows the same spots as unWISE w1 but each is smaller, and 2MASS J, which shows the same spots of light, smaller yet. Each image has a bright spot in the center surrounded by two red circles. Disk Detective volunteers compare images of the same star at different wavelengths to help figure out if that star has a disk.
ALT Image of the Flame Nebula as captured by NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia) and processed by Gladys Kober of NASA and the Catholic University of America. Used for decoration.
ALT An illustration of many faint brown dwarf stars surrounding a galaxy. The galaxy occupies most of the image as a fuzzy oval disk.
ALT An illustration of several faint brown dwarfs surrounding a galaxy, viewed from a perspective slightly above the disk. The galaxy occupies the upper left quadrant of the image as a glowing disk extending out of view. The galaxy’s center is a bright yellow glow in the upper left. The bright center rapidly fades to a more subtle glow in the outskirts of the galaxy. Dark dust clouds spiral outward from the center and obscure some of the glow. Two fully illustrated brown dwarfs are visible at the center of the image and to the left, glowing red-orange and with horizontal stripes representing bands of clouds. Several reddish points of varying sizes dot the galaxy farther away, representing the ancient brown dwarfs that could be detectable by Rubin Observatory. The background is black sprinkled with the white pinpricks of distant galaxies.
ALT Illustration of several faint brown dwarfs surrounding a galaxy, viewed from a perspective above the disk. The galaxy is in the upper left quadrant as a glowing disk. The galaxy’s center is a bright yellow glow in the upper left. Dark dust clouds spiral outward from the center. Two brown dwarfs are visible at the center of the image and to the left, glowing red-orange with horizontal stripes representing bands of clouds. Several reddish points represent the ancient brown dwarfs.
