Search for Hidden Cosmic Companions in Sun's Backyard

Some stars have planets. Others are orbited by brown dwarfs, balls of gas too massive to be planets but too low-mass to be stars. Astronomers value brown dwarf–star pairs because being paired with a star helps reveal a brown dwarf’s age; ages of astronomical objects are often hard to measure but essential for understanding how they form.

You can join NASA’s new Backyard Worlds: Binaries project and help astronomers discover these rare and interesting pairs. As a volunteer, you'll inspect images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope. Brown dwarfs may appear as small dots moving across a field of otherwise static stars.

"We need your help to gain critical insights into these enigmatic cosmic objects," said project lead Aaron Meisner. Brown dwarfs are common but mysterious because they are so faint. There’s one for every three or four stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy, and they serve as important laboratories for understanding giant planets like Jupiter.

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