Disk Detective

Disk Detective is the first NASA-led and -funded collaboration project with Zooniverse.[2] It is NASA's largest crowdsourcing citizen science project[3] aiming at engaging the general public in search of stars, which are surrounded by dust-rich circumstellar disks, where planets usually dwell and are formed.[4][5] The principal investigator is Marc Kuchner.[6]

Disk Detective
Type of site
Citizen science project
Available inEnglish, Spanish, German, Polish, Chinese, Indonesian, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Portuguese
OwnerCitizen Science Alliance[1]
Created byDisk Detective Team
URLwww.diskdetective.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Launched31 January 2014 (2014-01-31)
Current statusPaused

Details

Disk Detective was launched in January 2014, and was expected to continue till 2017.[7] In April 2019 Disk Detective uploaded partly classified subjects, as Zooniverse did stop to support the old platform for projects,[8] which was completed in May 2019.[9] The project team is working on a new version of Disk Detective.[10] The public is invited to search through images captured by space agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)[11] and other sky surveys: the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

The images in Disk Detective have all been pre-selected to be extra bright at wavelengths where circumstellar dust emits thermal radiation. They are at mid-infrared, near-infrared and optical wavelengths. Disks are not the only heavenly objects that appear bright at infrared wavelengths; active galactic nuclei, galaxies, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds also emit at these wavelengths. Computer algorithms can't distinguish the difference, so it is necessary to examine all images by "eye" to make sure that the selected candidates are stars with disks, and not other celestial objects.

Classification

At the Disk Detective website, the images are presented in animated forms which are called flip books. The users view a flip book and classify the target object based on simple criteria, such as whether it is round in DSS2 or 2MASS images, or the object is extended beyond circle in WISE images, if there is more than one object in the circle or if it is off the crosshairs. The ideal target is classified as a "good candidate", and further vetted by the advanced research group into a list of "debris disk of interest" (DDOI) candidates.

The selected disk candidates will eventually become the future targets for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. They will also be the topic for future publications in the scientific literature.

Seeking objects

The disks that NASA's scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Centre aim to find are debris disks, which are older than 5 million years; and Young Stellar Object, or YSO disks, which are younger than 5 million years.

Advanced user group

The volunteers can join an exclusive group, called "advanced users" or "super users" after they have done 300 classifications. The advanced users then might compare the candidates with literature or analyse follow-up data.[12][13] This advanced user group is similar to other groups that have formed in citizen science projects, such as the Peas Corps in galaxy zoo.[14]

Discoveries
AWI0005x3s, a ~45 Myr-old pre-transitional disk discovered by volunteers of Disk Detective

The project discovered the first example of a Peter Pan disk. At the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society the discovery of four new Peter Pan Disks was presented. Three objects are high-probability members of the Columba and Carina associations. The forth object has an intermediate likelihood of being part of a moving group. All four objects are young M-dwarfs.[15][16]

The project has also discovered the first debris disk with a white dwarf companion (HD 74389)[17] and a new kind of M dwarf disk (AWI0005x3s) in a moving group.[18] The project found 37 new disks (including HD 74389) and four Be stars in the first paper[17] and 213 newly-identified disk candidates in the third paper.[13] Together with AWI0005x3s, the Disk Detective project found 251 new disks or disk candidates. The third paper also found HD 150972 (WISEA J164540.79-310226.6) as a likely member of the Scorpius-Centaurus moving group, 12 candidates that are co-moving binaries and 31 that are closer than 125 parsec, making them possible targets for direct imaging of exoplanets.[13]

False positive rate and applications

The project did make estimates about the amount of high-quality disk candidates in AllWISE and lower-limit false-positive rates for several catalogs, based on classification false-positive rates, follow-up imaging and literature review. Out of the 149,273 subjects on the Disk Detective website 7.9±0.2% are likely candidates. 90.2% of the subjects are eliminated by website evaluation, 1.35% were eliminated by literature review and 0.52% were eliminated by high-resolution follow-up imaging (Robo-AO + Dupont/Retrocam). From this result AllWISE might contain ~21,600 high quality disk candidates and 4-8% of the disk candidates from high-quality surveys might show background objects in high-resolution images, which are bright enough to affect the infrared excess.[13]

The project also has a database that is available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). It contains the "goodFraction", describing how often a source was voted as a good source on the website, as well as other information about the source, such as comments from the science team, machine learned classification, cross-matched catalog information and SED fits.[19]

A group at MIT did use the Disk Detective classifications to train a machine-learning system. They found that their machine-learning system agreed with user identifications of debris disks 97% of the time. The group has found 367 promising candidates for follow-up observations with this method.[20][21]

See also

Zooniverse projects:

References
  1. "Projects". Citizen Science Alliance. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
  2. https://www.zooniverse.org/projects
  3. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-032 NASA-Sponsored 'Disk Detective' Lets Public Search for New Planetary Nurseries
  4. Launching Disk Detective: A New Citizen Science Website › Marketing For Scientists
  5. Sinai Nick and Smith Gayle. "Second Open Government National Action Plan". The White House Blog. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
  6. Disk Detective: Team
  7. "Disk Detective". NASA. Retrieved 3 September 2014.
  8. Detective, Disk (20 April 2019). "There are only 10 days left to finish Disk Detective 1.0 before we shut down and we need your help now!Come to http://DiskDetective.org and help us classify the rest of the partly classified sources before April 30! Please retweet!! #citizenscience". @diskdetective. Retrieved 15 November 2019. External link in |title= (help)
  9. Detective, Disk (30 April 2019). "We are at 100%. Now a new chapter begins". @diskdetective. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  10. "Disk Detective: Archive". diskdetective.org. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  11. "NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog of Entire Infrared Sky". NASA. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
  12. marckuchner2014 (4 December 2018). "Our Third Paper: The Advanced Users' Story". Disk Detective. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  13. Silverberg, Steven M.; Kuchner, Marc J.; Wisniewski, John P.; Bans, Alissa S.; Debes, John H.; Kenyon, Scott J.; Baranec, Christoph; Riddle, Reed; Law, Nicholas; Teske, Johanna K.; Burns-Kaurin, Emily (November 2018). "Follow-up Imaging of Disk Candidates from the Disk Detective Citizen Science Project: New Discoveries and False Positives in WISE Circumstellar Disk Surveys". The Astrophysical Journal. 868 (1): 43. arXiv:1809.09663. Bibcode:2018ApJ...868...43S. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aae3e3. ISSN 0004-637X.
  14. Cardamone, Carolin; Schawinski, Kevin; Sarzi, Marc; Bamford, Steven P.; Bennert, Nicola; Urry, C. M.; Lintott, Chris; Keel, William C.; Parejko, John; Nichol, Robert C.; Thomas, Daniel (1 November 2009). "Galaxy Zoo Green Peas: discovery of a class of compact extremely star-forming galaxies". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 399 (3): 1191–1205. arXiv:0907.4155. Bibcode:2009MNRAS.399.1191C. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2009.15383.x. ISSN 0035-8711.
  15. Silverberg, S.; Wisniewski, J.; Kuchner, M.; Collaboration, Disk Detective (January 2020). "Four New Peter Pan Disk Candidates from Disk Detective". AAS. 52: 161.05. Bibcode:2020AAS...23516105S.
  16. Silverberg, Steven M.; Wisniewski, John P.; Kuchner, Marc J.; Lawson, Kellen D.; Bans, Alissa S.; Debes, John H.; Biggs, Joseph R.; Bosch, Milton K. D.; Doll, Katharina; Luca, Hugo A. Durantini; Enachioaie, Alexandru (14 January 2020). "Peter Pan Disks: Long-lived Accretion Disks Around Young M Stars". arXiv:2001.05030 [astro-ph.SR].
  17. Kuchner, Marc J.; Silverberg, Steven M.; Bans, Alissa S.; Bhattacharjee, Shambo; Kenyon, Scott J.; Debes, John H.; Currie, Thayne; Garcia, Luciano; Jung, Dawoon; Lintott, Chris; McElwain, Michael; Padgett, Deborah L.; Rebull, Luisa M.; Wisniewski, John P.; Nesvold, Erika; Schawinski, Kevin; Thaller, Michelle L.; Grady, Carol A.; Biggs, Joseph; Bosch, Milton; Cernohous, Tadeás; Luca, Hugo A. Durantini; Hyogo, Michiharu; Wah, Lily Lau Wan; Piipuu, Art; Piñeiro, Fernanda (19 July 2016). "Disk Detective: Discovery of New Circumstellar Disk Candidates through Citizen Science". The Astrophysical Journal. 830 (2): 84. arXiv:1607.05713. Bibcode:2016ApJ...830...84K. doi:10.3847/0004-637X/830/2/84.
  18. Silverberg, Steven M.; Kuchner, Marc J.; Wisniewski, John P.; Gagne, Jonathan; Bans, Alissa S.; Bhattacharjee, Shambo; Currie, Thayne R.; Debes, John R.; Biggs, Joseph R.; Bosch, Milton; Doll, Katharina; Durantini-Luca, Hugo A.; Enachioaie, Alexandru; Griffith, Sr; Hyogo, Michiharu; Piñeiro, Fernanda; Collaboration, Disk Detective (14 October 2016). "A New M Dwarf Debris Disk Candidate in a Young Moving Group Discovered with Disk Detective". The Astrophysical Journal. 830 (2): L28. arXiv:1610.05293. Bibcode:2016ApJ...830L..28S. doi:10.3847/2041-8205/830/2/L28.
  19. silverbergastro (9 September 2019). "The Disk Detective Database". Disk Detective. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  20. "Computer searches telescope data for evidence of distant planets". MIT News. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  21. Nguyen, T.; Pankratius, V.; Eckman, L.; Seager, S. (April 2018). "Computer-aided discovery of debris disk candidates: A case study using the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) catalog". Astronomy and Computing. 23: 72–82. Bibcode:2018A&C....23...72N. doi:10.1016/j.ascom.2018.02.004. ISSN 2213-1337.
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