In brief: Citizen scientists help discover disk
An artist's concept of the star, surrounded by the disk.
Image: Jonathan Holden/Disk Detective.
The amateur astronomers were using Disk Detective.org, an online project that enables anyone to examine NASA images and help search for disks -- rings of gas and dust orbiting around a young star. Planets form around such disks.
The star in question is approximately 45 million years old, making it the oldest red dwarf star with a disk, according to a report from the Carnegie Institution for Science.
The eight citizen scientists, along with professional researchers, co-authored a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
At DiskDetective.org, users view 10-second videos from NASA surveys and then make classifications. The website was launched in 2014.
“Moonlets” around Uranus: Two small “moonlets” could be in orbit near the rings of Uranus, according to NASA.
While looking at images of the planet's icy rings taken in 1986 by Voyager 2, Rob Chancia, a University of Idaho doctoral student, noticed key patterns in the rings, a space agency news release said.
Chancia, along with Matt Hedman, assistant professor of physics at the University of Idaho, have published their research online. “Based on the observed structures in the rings, we estimate that the moonlets would need to be located about 100 (kilometers) exterior to the rings' semi-major axes and be 2-7 (kilometers) in radius,” the two wrote.
Even though the Voyager data is 30 years old, scientists continue to study it, according to NASA.
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