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NASA Website Allows Public to Search WISE Data for Nearby Objects and Planet Nine

Accepted submission by takyon at 2017-02-16 22:10:16
Science

NASA is collaborating with Zooniverse [nasa.gov] to allow the public to search WISE [wikipedia.org] data for "nearby" rogue planets [wikipedia.org], brown dwarfs [wikipedia.org], and Planet Nine [wikipedia.org]:

NASA is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space. A new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. The movies highlight objects that have gradually moved across the sky.

"There are just over four light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored," said lead researcher Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Because there's so little sunlight, even large objects in that region barely shine in visible light. But by looking in the infrared, WISE may have imaged objects we otherwise would have missed."

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 [zooniverse.org].

Previously: No Evidence for 'Planet X', says NASA [soylentnews.org] - "[No] object the size of Saturn or larger exists out to a distance of 10,000 astronomical units (AU), and no object larger than Jupiter exists out to 26,000 AU."
NASA's WISE Spacecraft Discovers Most Luminous Galaxy in Universe [soylentnews.org]
NASA's NEOWISE Mission Finds 72 Additional Near-Earth Objects [soylentnews.org]
Two New Kuiper Belt Objects Boost the Case for "Planet Nine" [soylentnews.org]
The Mysterious 'Planet Nine' Might be Causing the Whole Solar System to Wobble [soylentnews.org]


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