Backyard Worlds: Cool Neighbors

Together we can discover new nearby cool neighbors of the Sun, known as brown dwarfs. Through the use of telescope data and the human brain’s ability to distinguish patterns with relative ease, we can identify real brown dwarfs hidden among other stars, galaxies, and detector noise.

Brown dwarfs are celestial objects with masses in between those of stars and those of giant planets like Jupiter. You can think of them like oversized versions of Jupiter, but floating around all alone in interstellar space.

These intriguing celestial objects are so dim that we need your help to spot them! Join our quest to reveal the Sun’s elusive cosmic neighbors using infrared images taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope. Your discoveries may even get observed by the James Webb Space Telescope!