Citizen scientists find young-Jupiter-like object missed by previous
exoplanet searches
New study finds a world about 146 light years away that's not quite a
planet, not quite a brown dwarf

Date:
December 9, 2021
Source:
American Museum of Natural History
Summary:
Citizen scientists have discovered a new object orbiting a Sun-like
star that had been missed by previous searches. The object is very
distant from its host star -- more than 1,600 times farther than
the Earth is from the Sun -- and is thought to be a large planet
or a small brown dwarf, a type of object that is not massive enough
to burn hydrogen like true stars.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Citizen scientists have discovered a new object orbiting a Sun-like star
that had been missed by previous searches. The object is very distant
from its host star -- more than 1,600 times farther than the Earth is
from the Sun -- and is thought to be a large planet or a small brown
dwarf, a type of object that is not massive enough to burn hydrogen
like true stars. Details about the new world are published today in The Astrophysical Journal.


========================================================================== "This star had been looked at by more than one campaign searching for
exoplanet companions. But previous teams looked really tight, really
close to the star," said lead author Jackie Faherty, senior scientist
in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Astrophysics
and co-founder of the citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9,
which led to the object's discovery.

"Because citizen scientists really liked the project, they found an object
that many of these direct imaging surveys would have loved to have found,
but they didn't look far enough away from its host." The Backyard Worlds project lets volunteers search through nearly five years of digital images taken from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission to
try to identify new worlds inside and outside of our solar system.

If an object close to Earth is moving, it will appear to "jump" in
the same part of the sky over the years, similar to an object "moving"
in a flipbook.

Users can then flag these objects for further study by scientists.

In 2018, Backyard Worlds participant Jo"rg Schu"mann, who lives in
Germany, alerted scientists to a new co-moving system: an object that
appeared to be moving with a star. After confirming the system's motion, scientists used telescopes in California and Hawai'i to observe the star
and object separately and were immediately excited by what they saw.

The new object is young and has a low mass, between 10 and 20 times the
mass of Jupiter. This range overlaps with an important cutoff point --
13 times the mass of Jupiter -- which is sometimes used to distinguish
planets from brown dwarfs. But scientists still aren't sure how heavy
planets can be, which can make relying on this cutoff challenging. "We
don't have a very good definition of the word 'planet,'" said Faherty.

Another defining feature is how they form: planets form from material
gathering in disks around stars, while brown dwarfs are born from the
collapse of giant clouds of gas, similar to how stars form. But the
physical properties of this new object do not provide any clues to its formation. "There are hints that maybe it's more like an exoplanet, but
there's nothing conclusive yet. However, it is an outlier," said Faherty.

What surprised the team the most is the new object's relationship to its
host star. The object is farther away from the star than expected based
on its comparatively low mass -- over 1,600 times farther than the Earth
is from the Sun. Few objects with such different masses from their host
star have been found this far apart.

Ultimately, this discovery may help scientists get a better sense of
how solar systems form, which is crucial to understanding the origins
of life in the universe. "You had an exoplanet community just staring
so close to it," said Faherty. "And we just pulled out a little,
and we found an object. That makes me excited about what we might be
missing in giant planets that might exist around these stars," said
Faherty. "Sometimes, you need to broaden your scope." Other authors on
the study include Johanna M. Vos, Daniella C. Bardalez Gagliuffi, Austin Rothermich, and Andrew Ayala from the American Museum of Natural History; Jonathan Gagne' from the University of Montreal; Mark Popinchalk from the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York;
Adam J. Burgasser, Christian Aganze, Chih-Chun Hsu, Roman Gerasimov, and Christopher A. Theissen from the University of California, San Diego; Adam
C. Schneider from the U.S. Naval Observatory and George Mason University;
J. Davy Kirkpatrick and Federico Marocco from the California Institute
of Technology; Aaron M. Meisner from NSF's National Optical-Infrared
Astronomy Research Laboratory; Marc J. Kuchner from NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center; Dan Caselden from Gigamon Applied Threat Research; Eileen
C. Gonzales from Cornell University; Sarah L. Casewell from the University
of Leicester; John H. Debes from the Space Telescope Science Institute;
William J. Cooper from the University of Hertfordshire and the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy, and R. L. Smart from the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy.

This research was supported in part by NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis
Program grant #s NNH17AE75I and 80NSSC20K0452 as well as NASA grant 2017-ADAP17-0067, the National Science Foundation grant #s 2007068,
2009136, and 2009177, and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
American_Museum_of_Natural_History. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Jacqueline K. Faherty, Jonathan Gagne', Mark Popinchalk, Johanna
M. Vos,
Adam J. Burgasser, Jo"rg Schu"mann, Adam C. Schneider, J. Davy
Kirkpatrick, Aaron M. Meisner, Marc J. Kuchner, Daniella C. Bardalez
Gagliuffi, Federico Marocco, Dan Caselden, Eileen C. Gonzales,
Austin Rothermich, Sarah L. Casewell, John H. Debes, Christian
Aganze, Andrew Ayala, Chih-Chun Hsu, William J. Cooper, R. L. Smart,
Roman Gerasimov, Christopher A. Theissen. A Wide Planetary Mass
Companion Discovered through the Citizen Science Project Backyard
Worlds: Planet 9. The Astrophysical Journal, 2021; 923 (1): 48 DOI:
10.3847/1538-4357/ac2499 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211209124207.htm

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