To determine which young planetary systems to study closer with the Hubble Space Telescope and in a few years time its successor the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/C. Burrows (STScI)
Space news (NASA crowdsourcing projects: Disk Detective.org; help discover new planetary nurseries) – scanning over 745 million stellar objects across the cosmos looking for new planet nurseries to study –

“Through Disk Detective, volunteers will help the astronomical community discover new planetary nurseries that will become future targets for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope,” said James Garvin, the chief scientist for NASA Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate.

Credit: NASA
The objects volunteers help classify were originally narrowed down from around 345 million initially identified by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) during a survey of the entire sky between 2010 and 2011. Astronomers used computers to search through WISE data to find the objects volunteers classify through this citizen science initiative to identify more planetary nurseries for astronomers to study.
“Planets form and grow within disks of gas, dust and icy grains that surround young stars, but many details about the process still elude us,” said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We need more examples of planet-forming habitats to better understand how planets grow and mature.”

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“Disk Detective’s simple and engaging interface allows volunteers from all over the world to participate in cutting-edge astronomy research that wouldn’t even be possible without their efforts,” said Laura Whyte, director of citizen science at Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Ill., a founding partner of the Zooniverse collaboration.
Read about NASA’s recent selection of five American aerospace firms to study Mars orbiter concepts.
Learn more about NASA’s selection of seven American university teams to design and engineer space habitat prototypes.
Read and learn more about NASA’s selection of eight teams of ambitious young university students to design space habitats for colonizers heading to Mars.
Join NASA’s voyage through the cosmos here.
Check out DiskDetective.org.
Discover the Hubble Space Telescope here.
Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope.
Discover NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center here.
Learn more about NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.