New Horizons Adventure Continues

The New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 to explore distant Pluto and other mysterious objects.

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, belong to a category of planets known as “ice dwarfs.” They have solid surfaces but, unlike the rocky planets like Earth and Mars, a big part of their mass is icy material.

Scientists are eager to see what New Horizon's will find in the unexplored outer part of the solar system. The adventure of exploration continues.

More info: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

 

Credit: Mike Yakovlev, Johns Hopkins APL

Pluto and Charon.  Credit: NASA

Can You Find Planet 9?

More info: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9/about/research

Scientists need your help searching for new objects at the edges of our solar system.

They have created a project for you to help find real celestial objects from NASA images.

The real objects are brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, the Sun's nearest neighbors.

You may find an object closer than Proxima Centauri (the closest star to the Sun) or even discover the Sun's hypothesized ninth planet, which models suggest might appear in these images.

People Power!

"Citizen scientist" is a great title. It means regular people (like you and me) can help researchers make new discoveries.

You don't need any special training to make important discoveries. You need eyes and some examples to follow, then - BAM - you're exploring the universe!

Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research. They say this:

"You don’t need any specialized background, training, or expertise to participate in any Zooniverse projects. We make it easy for anyone to contribute to real academic research, on their own computer, at their own convenience."

Here are some of my favorite Zooniverse projects. 

Try them out and let me know what you think at MickeyKulp00 -at- gmail -dot- com.

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AI4Mars
Teaching Mars Rovers How to Classify Martian Terrain
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/hiro-ono/ai4mars

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Active Asteroids
Examine images to find comet-like tails... on asteroids! These strange objects hold clues about water on Earth, in the solar system, and beyond.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/orionnau/active-asteroids

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Cosmological Jellyfish
Help us find galaxies that look like jellyfish! This will help us understand how they interact with their environment.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/apillepich/cosmological-jellyfish

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Dark Energy Explorers
Identify distant galaxies to help measure dark energy when the universe was just ~2-3 billion years old.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/erinmc/dark-energy-explorers

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Backyard Worlds: Planet 9
Search the realm beyond Neptune for new brown dwarfs and planets.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9