In a recent census of over 4,000 cosmic objects within a 65-light-year radius from the Sun, researchers have discovered that there are four times as many stars as brown dwarfs in this region. However, low-mass objects are more common than high-mass ones, with the average mass being just 40 percent that of the Sun. This study was made possible through the citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, which enlisted the help of thousands of amateur astronomers to identify potential brown dwarfs in image sets.
J. Davy Kirkpatrick, lead author of the study and researcher at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in California, commented on the findings, stating that there may be something about the star formation process hidden in the data. Brown dwarfs are objects that lie between stars and planets in terms of mass, not fusing hydrogen in their cores like stars do but more massive than planets like Jupiter.
The study suggests that the formation process of brown dwarfs may differ from that of higher mass stars, indicating that different factors may determine which type of object is formed during the collapse of gas and dust clouds. By involving citizen scientists in the identification process of objects in this census, experts were able to speed up the process by 10 to 15 years compared to traditional methods.
Backyard Worlds has proven to be an incredibly valuable tool for advancing our understanding of the cosmos. Through its collaborative effort with citizen scientists, researchers have been able to uncover new information about brown dwarfs and other celestial bodies within our galaxy. With its continued success, this project is poised to make even more groundbreaking discoveries about our universe in years to come.