Amateur Astronomers Discover Cosmic Object Cruising at 1 Million Miles Per Hour

milky way galaxyPhoto byCasey HorneronUnsplash

Citizen scientists, in their quest for the elusive Planet 9, have made a significant discovery—a cosmic object moving at such a staggering speed that it is on the verge of escaping the Milky Way. This discovery, made by contributors to the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, marks a pivotal moment in astronomy. It is the first time a cosmic object with the mass of a small star has been detected moving at such a high velocity.

Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden made this discovery using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission data. The object, designated CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, is believed to be a brown dwarf—a type of celestial body that lacks the mass to initiate hydrogen fusion in its core, like a star. It is currently hurtling through space at an astonishing speed of 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) per hour.

Kabatnik, from Nuremberg, Germany, and a co-author on a new paper describing the discovery, said in a statement:

I can’t describe the level of excitement. When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.

The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, a NASA-funded initiative, enlists volunteers from around the globe to comb through astronomical data in search of new celestial objects. This citizen science effort has already led to the discovery of over 4,000 brown dwarfs, but none as fast as CWISE J1249. The project leverages infrared data from the WISE mission, which ceased operations in 2011, along with ground-based follow-ups to study the characteristics of such objects. The volunteers, often referred to as 'citizen scientists', play a crucial role in this project, contributing their time and expertise to the search for new cosmic objects.

CWISE J1249 is either a brown dwarf or a very low-mass star, and it is moving so swiftly that it will eventually break free from the gravitational pull of the Milky Way. Astronomers are puzzled about what could have propelled this object to such speeds. Two main theories have emerged. The first suggests that CWISE J1249 was part of a binary system with a white dwarf that went supernova, effectively slingshotting the object into space. The second theory posits that the object was ejected from a globular cluster after a close encounter with a pair of binary black holes.

Further complicating the mystery, CWISE J1249 exhibits an unusual chemical composition, containing very few heavy elements compared to other stars and brown dwarfs. This suggests that the object is extremely old, possibly one of the oldest known in the Milky Way. Its unique chemical composition and rapid movement make it a fascinating object of study, offering potential insights into the early stages of our galaxy's formation.