The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Project.
Society Meeting
Thursday, 4th April 2019 (19:45 - 22:00)
Venue: swmcmeet
A search for Brown Dwarfs and the elusive Planet 9... Includes material very kindly provided by Dr Adam Schneider of the University of Arizona.
The probable existence of planet nine in our Solar System year led to the inception of the Backyard Worlds project led by NASA scientist Dr. Marc Kuchner in 2017. The aim was primarily to encourage volunteers to distinguish real celestial objects from image artefacts in data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. The real objects are brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, the Sun's nearest neighbours.
The prizes of participating include finding an object closer than Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the Sun) or even discover the Sun's hypothesised ninth planet which models suggest might appear in these images. Brown dwarfs are of course failed stars with masses ranging from 13 Mj TO 80Mj. The project means advanced users become aware of the professional tools available to Astronomers.
Two years on and this MSAS member and Backyards Worlds: Planet Nine contributor has proudly participated in many teleconferences as well as become self-trained in the use of professional Astronomical database systems to vet candidates through SIMDAD, VizeR, IRSA Finderchart and Wiseview to name but a few of the systems.
This the second talk, following up from last year, I shall once again give an overview of everything of what the project is about culminating to what is needed to discover a brown dwarf or a star or two. With a presentation of results obtained.
Speaker: Peter Jalowiczor
Peter Jalowiczor is an amateur astronomer living in Rotherham. He is primarily known for co-discovering four exoplanets at home using data released to the public by the University of California's Lick-Carnegie Planet Search Team. At University he completed research confirming that k=2 (the delta effect) for comets from work on Halley's Comet. Since 2017 he has been involved in research on brown dwarfs - objects between exoplanets and stars.
He has had four books published: two about football and two about WWII. He is also the founder of a football club, known as the Polish Millers. Registered in the Polish Football league. It was mirrored on Rotherham United with a regular feature in the match programme they played in Rotherham United strip! This has also been recognised at the highest level of the Polish Football league.