Professional and amateur astronomer can make amazing discoveries about space. Frank Kiwy, a citizen scientist, used publicly available data to discover 34 new ultracool dwarfs.

An astronomer at the NOIRLab said that the discoveries were made by an astronomer. Major discoveries are often found in modern astronomy archives and are waiting to be noticed.

Illustration of an ultracool dwarf with a companion white dwarf.
Illustration of an ultracool dwarf with a companion white dwarf. Ace citizen scientist Frank Kiwy used the Astro Data Lab science platform at NSF’s NOIRLab to discover 34 new ultracool dwarf binary systems in the Sun’s neighborhood, nearly doubling the number of such systems known. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick

There are two stars in a system. An object between a star and a planet is called a brown dwarf. They don't have nuclear fusion, which is how stars produce their heat, but they are similar to what happens to a star as it cools The pool of brown dwarf binaries that can be studied has been greatly increased by this discovery.

As part of the Backyard Worlds project, a group of citizen scientists comb through telescope data to look for indications of previously undiscovered objects.

A diverse community of volunteers has been created by the Backyard Worlds project. 150,000 volunteers across the globe have participated in Backyard Worlds, among which a few hundred'super users' perform ambitious self- directed research projects.

The set of brown dwarfs was found from the Astro Data Archive. The results of KiWY's research were published in a paper.

The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project is great. Kiwy said that once you master the regular workflows you can dive a lot deeper into the subject. This might be the right thing for a person who is curious and willing to learn.

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