This discovery has been a team effort on multiple levels—a collaboration involving volunteers, professionals, and students. Kabatnik credits other citizen scientists with helping him search, including Melina Thévenot, who “blew my mind with her personal blog about doing searches using Astronomical Data Query Language,” he said. Software written by citizen scientist Frank Kiwy was also instrumental … Read more
A small team of citizen scientists developed a tool called WISE View, using images from NASA’s WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission, to easily stitch together images into animations. A larger group of volunteers then used those animations to find moving objects. “They’ve made the project more efficient for everyone else,” Kirkpatrick said. (WISE’s mission … Read more
Even within our own solar system, scientists have seen evidence of giant, planetary collisions from long ago. Remaining clues like Uranus’ tilt and the existence of Earth’s moon point to times in our distant history when the planets in our stellar neighborhood slammed together, forever changing their shape and place in orbit. Scientists looking outside … Read more