Backyard Worlds: Binaries

Most stars in our Milky Way galaxy exist in multiple star systems, such as binaries in which two or more stars orbit each other. Some of these binaries are pairings between stars and a type of enigmatic celestial object known as a brown dwarf. In Backyard Worlds: Binaries, we need your help to visually inspect observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope and discover more cases of brown dwarfs orbiting stars -- that is, brown dwarfs in binaries! Revealing more brown dwarfs in binary systems will teach us about brown dwarf formation and help astronomers identify the brown dwarfs that most closely resemble giant planets like Jupiter.

The material contained in this project is based upon work supported by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant or cooperative agreement, specifically a Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP) grant. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA.
For more NASA citizen science projects, go to science.nasa.gov/citizenscience