Citizen Science at NASA: Disk Detective and Backyard

1. Citizen Science at NASA:
Disk Detective and Backyard
Worlds: Planet 9
Marc Kuchner
Citizen Science Officer
NASA Science Mission Directorate

2. NASA Funded Citizen Science Projects Have Discovered:
• 400,000 Martian Seasonal Fans (Planet Four)
• 3500 Comets (Sungrazer Project)
• 1000 Brown Dwarf Candidates (Backyard Worlds: Planet 9)
• 100 Extrasolar Planets (Exoplanet Explorers & Planet Hunters)
• 47 Near Earth Asteroids (IASC)
• 4 Meteorites (Desert Fireball Network)
• The Oldest Planet-forming Disk (Disk Detective)
• A New Kind of Aurora (Aurorasaurus)

3. NASA Funded Citizen Science Projects Have Discovered:
• 400,000 Martian Seasonal Fans (Planet Four)
• 3500 Comets (Sungrazer Project)
• 1000 Brown Dwarf Candidates (Backyard Worlds: Planet 9)
• 100 Extrasolar Planets (Exoplanet Explorers & Planet Hunters)
• 47 Near Earth Asteroids (IASC)
• 4 Meteorites (Desert Fireball Network)
• The Oldest Planet-forming Disk (Disk Detective)
• A New Kind of Aurora (Aurorasaurus)

4. NASA Funded Citizen Science Projects Have Discovered:
• 400,000 Martian Seasonal Fans (Planet Four)
• 3500 Comets (Sungrazer Project)
• 1000 Brown Dwarf Candidates (Backyard Worlds: Planet 9)
• 100 Extrasolar Planets (Exoplanet Explorers & Planet Hunters)
• 47 Near Earth Asteroids (IASC)
• 4 Meteorites (Desert Fireball Network)
• The Oldest Planet-forming Disk (Disk Detective)
• A New Kind of Aurora (Aurorasaurus)

5. 1 million
Most
interesting
Images
Correctly
interprets 99%
of them
100 million
Images, Spectra,
Time Series, etc.
Present and Future of NASA Science
Analysis, Problem Solving,
Data Collecting by
Citizen Scientists
Machine Learning
& Data Mining Marc Kuchner 2018

6. Draw a Scientist Test
David Wade
Chambers 1983
Children believe
science is done
by and for the
benefit of others:
white men with
monsters in the
closet.

7. Zooniverse
1.7 Million Users
iNaturalist
1.0 Million
Users
Open Air Labs
(OPAL)
930K Users
Sources:
Chris Wood (eBird)
www.inaturalist.org/stats
Adam Mcmaster (Zooniverse)
www.opalexplorenature.org/aboutopal
www.globe.gov (assuming 20 students/teacher)
NASA
GLOBE
640K
Students
eBird
(Cornell)
411K
Users
Top Citizen Science Communities
July 1, 2018

8. Who Are
NASA’s
Citizen
Scientists?

9. Why Do Citizen Scientists Do It?
“Because it gives me a chance to explore the universe with
like-minded people.”
“Because it’s an awesome opportunity to make genuine
discoveries...”
“Because the community is passionate about their field...”

10. WISE
.org
Launched February 2014
PI: Marc Kuchner

11. NASA’s WISE mission saw 747 million
sources:
galaxies, asteroids, interstellar matter…
~20,000 debris disks &
protoplanetary disks are among
them: homes of exoplanets. Beta Pictoris disk
+ Planet

12. Try it now: DiskDetective.org
Click to Start
The Animation

13. • ~3 million classifications made so far by ~30,000
participants.
• Thousands of Objects of Interest found.
• Discovered first “Peter Pan” disk: the oldest known
protoplanetary disk.
• 12 citizen scientists are coathors on 3 papers in the
Astrophysical Journal.
WISE
.org

14. Oldest Known Planet-forming Disk
Image by citizen scientist
Jonathan Holden
Soon to be in
University of
Michigan Natural
History Museum

15. Superusers
E.g., Jonathan Holden
and
Hugo Durantini Luca

16. Citizen Scientists Read
The Professional Literature!

17. + Convolutional Neural Network
68% ± 1% of complete objects
that neural network scored as
>90% “good” are indeed
good candidates.
Not as good as humans, but useful for prioritization!

18. BACKYARD WORLDS: PLANET 9
• ~150,000 citizen scientists have
performed >5 million classifications of
WISE/NEOWISE images since 2017
• >1000 brown dwarf candidates
discovered, including >80 that are
exoplanet analogs.
• 48 brown dwarfs confirmed so far
including 3 very rare Y dwarfs.

19. Luhman et al. (2014)
???

20. (Trujilo & Sheppard 2014, Brown & Batygin 2016)
Planet Nine: ~10 Neptune Masses, a=700 AU

21. Try it now! BackyardWorlds.org

22. What You’re Looking For
Dipole
Objects of Interest
Mover

23. Dipole
Objects of Interest
Mover
What You’re Looking For

24. Dipole
Mover
Objects of Interest
What You’re Looking For

25. Dipole
Objects of Interest
Mover
What You’re Looking For

26. Artifacts
Ghost
Stars
What NOT to Mark

27. Artifacts
Ghost
Stars
What NOT to Mark

28. Artifacts
Ghost
Stars
What NOT to Mark

29. Artifacts
Ghost
Stars
What NOT to Mark

30. Citizen Scientists Write Their Own Codes!

31. WISEView
Web-Based Tool
Written by
Citizen Scientists
Dan Caselden
and Paul Westin

32. Hubble’s data archives have
spawned three citizen science
projects:
Galaxy Zoo Hubble
The Andromeda
Project
Marc Kuchner 2018
The Future
Star Date M83

33. Hubble’s data archives have
spawned three citizen science
projects:
WFIRST detectors to scale
With 20x the
detector area,
what citizen
science projects
will WFIRST demand?
Galaxy Zoo Hubble
The Andromeda
Project
Star Date M83
Marc Kuchner 2018
The Future

34. Draw a Scientist Test
2018
YOU