Citizen scientists create 3D map of brown dwarfs in our sun's neighborhood

[Admin]

A citizen scientist group has created the most complete map to of brown dwarfs neighboring our solar system.

Citizen scientists create 3D map of brown dwarfs in our sun's neighborhood : Read more

 

[HelloFuturology]

It's cool how ordinary citizens were instrumental in doing such serious science. But I'm curious why they were using data from 2010-11 but the paper was published in 2021?

 

[Helio]

Congrats to all that made those discoveries!

There is a quote in the article worth noting..."But we suspect that more of the sun’s cold and close neighbors still await discovery within our vast data archives."

My worksheet may be using questionable estimates, but if my references -- and my use of them -- aren't wrong, then there should be about 5x to 7x more brown dwarfs than the 525 they plotted.

 

[Helio]

It's cool how ordinary citizens were instrumental in doing such serious science. But I'm curious why they were using data from 2010-11 but the paper was published in 2021?

They mention the data came from the Spitzer space telescope. This was the best telescope used for mapping cooler objects, IIRC, as it was designed to look into the IR band, much more so than, say, the Hubble space telescope