Rogue celestial bodies are hidden across our Solar System. While we know they're there, astronomers have struggled to exactly pinpoint their positions in space. Even with the wealth of data provided by infrared telescopic surveys, there simply aren't enough people to comb through every portion of the sky. Now, astronomers at the Australian National University have asked for amateur stargazers to join their search for the fabled ninth planet.
The SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey is a project to make a digital map of the southern hemisphere, much as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) did for the northern hemisphere. This data has been compiled in the Zooniverse, an interactive reference guide to our Solar System. It contains hundreds of thousands of images of space, all recorded by a robotic telescope at the ANU's Siding Spring Observatory.
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This data has been made available to the public, in the hopes of speeding up the search for Planet Nine, which is speculated to exist beyond Pluto. If someone does identify it, they will be granted the chance to help name the planet.
Astronomer Percival Lowell first theorised a ninth planet in the 20th century. He speculated that disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune could be explained by the presence of a large planet further out in our solar system. This was originally thought to be Pluto, however, it proved too small to have caused these shifts. Since then, our technology has developed to a point that allows us to democratise the search for a ninth planet.
Images taken by the ANU SkyMapper telescope, in partnership with BBC Stargazing Live, show a compilation of pictures of the sky on different nights. These images are then superimposed onto each other with different background colours, due to the varying light filters on the telescopes. If you see something with an infrared colour that does not match its corresponding background, you could help collect more data on the stars and planetary forms in our Solar System.
It is believed that Planet Nine has already been recorded on Nasa's WISE telescope, but simply not recognised. In the outer Solar System, in an area known as the Kuiper belt, there have been signs of a ninth planet, but it has since proved elusive. Data from the ANU's telescope offers a powerful new way to discover this rogue planet.
ANU astronomer Brad Tucker told the BBC: “If this planet exists, it’s already in one of our thousands and thousands of images.”
A separate project on the Zooniverse site is also being used to help compile more data about our Solar System. The Zooniverse Backyard Planets project is a flipbook of infrared images – processed to highlight infrared sources in space that vary over time. This is to help find objects moving in real-time. If the object is moving slowly, it is classified as a “dipole”, but if the object is moving quickly, it’s called a “mover”.
You can identify dramatic changes in the Solar System by looking for dipoles and movers. For example, in one section, there was relatively little activity in terms of moving objects or large bodies of infrared light. In another, a blaze of startling light cut across the sky.
If you think you’ve found something interesting, you can mark the locations of the object in the frame, leaving behind bright green crosshairs on the map. You also have the option to talk to others online about what you’ve discovered. You can move freely from one set of stars to another, examining celestial bodies as you go.
Objects of interest could include brown dwarfs and low-mass stars closest to the Sun. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas too big to be called planets but too small to be called stars – termed as “rogue worlds” by the Zooniverse, these cold brown dwarfs, known as Y dwarfs are a relatively hidden population in our Solar System.
This isn't the first time stargazers have been asked to get involved with planet-hunting. Crowd-sourced astronomy has been gaining momentum, from the discovery of Proxima b near Proxima Centauri, to the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. These steps towards open-sourced scientific data are bringing the everyman or woman into a new age space-race - one utilising our technologies to form a stronger, more democratic connection between the Earth and the stars.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
