Scientists just found 95 new almost-stars near our system

[Mike Wehner]

• Citizen scientists helped to scour data gathered by NASA and other groups to find evidence of brown dwarfs lurking near our own solar system.
• Brown dwarfs aren't massive enough to become stars, but they're much more massive than planets.
• A whopping 95 new brown dwarfs were discovered as a result of this new research effort.

Space is huge and there are only so many scientists on Earth studying it at any given time. That means there's a lot that could go unnoticed, especially when NASA and other space agencies have countless spacecraft and telescopes gathering data night and day. That's where citizen scientists come in, and as NASA explains in a new blog post, a team made up of members of the general public have helped to discover nearly 100 new objects in our cosmic backyard.

Using data from the NEOWISE survey, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, amateur scientists helped to discover a whopping 95 new objects hanging out near our Solar System. They're called brown dwarfs, and while they don't light up the night sky, that doesn't make them any less interesting.

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Scientists just found 95 new almost-stars near our system originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 18 Aug 2020 at 23:18:09 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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