Citizen Scientists Log One Million Classifications of Dusty Disks from WISE

Citizen scientists are making more and more discoveries each day. Now, a NASA-sponsored website designed to crowdsource analysis of data from the agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has reached a new milestone. With the help of citizen scientists, it's logged one million classifications of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO).

"This is absolutely mind-boggling," said Marc Kuchner, the project's principal investigator, in a news release. "We've already broken new ground with the data, and we are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed to Disk Detective so far."

Essentially, NASA has set up a website, called DiskDetective.org, where people can look at images taken by the WISE mission. People are encouraged to find two types of developing planetary environments. The first, known as a YSO disk, is typically less than five million years old, contains large quantities of gas, and often is found in or near young star clusters. The second planetary habitat, known as a debris disk, tends to be older than five million years, holds little or no gas, and possesses belts of rocky or icy debris that resemble the asteroid and Kuiper belts found in our own solar system.

Planets can form and grow within disks of gas, dust and icy grains surrounding young stars. That means identifying these disks is crucial to understanding planet formation. While software can identify some dust-rich disks, it can't quite distinguish them from other infrared-bright sources, such as galaxies, interstellar dust clouds and asteroids. That's where citizen scientists come in.

Volunteers watch a 10-second "flip book" of a disk candidate shown at several different wavelengths from three different telescopes, including WISE. Then, they click one or more buttons that best describe the objects appearance. Each classification helps astronomers decide which images may be contaminated by background galaxies, interstellar matter or image artifacts, and which may be real disks that should be studied in more detail.

"We've come a long way, but there's still lots and lots more work to do-so please drop by the site and do a little science with us!" said Kuchner.

Want to get involved? You can detect disks on the WISE website.

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