NASA never stops investigating what is up there, now they have discovered a very strange object they have called CWISE J1249, it is a kind of red orb that moves at a very fast speed: more than a million miles per hour, which comes to about 1.6 million kilometers per hour. But it has not only drawn attention for being fast, but also because it shines with a very special reddish tone, and its composition does not resemble much that of other objects we already knew.
The discovery of this phenomenon was thanks to some volunteers who were collaborating in a project open to the public, where anyone could analyze data from the WISE telescope! That is what is called citizen science, right?!
How they found the red orb
No secret lab or elite team with giant telescopes was needed. This orb was detected in a NASA program open to the public called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. Hundreds of people reviewed millions of points of light captured by the WISE telescope until someone noticed something that did not fit, a very faint light that moved too fast, something that was not normal.
Thanks to that they discovered CWISE J1249, and it went from being just another lost point in space to becoming an object that now has NASA with a magnifying glass on it.
What is Backyard Worlds Planet 9?
A NASA project that wants to bring astronomy closer to anyone willing to help discover our universe. And you know what? It is perfect for those of us who were never good at math but love astronomy!
What is special about this orb?
Nothing like it has ever been seen before, first because of its speed (do you know what 1.6 million km/h is????), and then because of its intense red color, that tone places it within the group of red dwarfs or something similar, but there is something strange in its composition. Scientists say it has low metallicity, which points to it being an old star. Very old. Maybe a piece left over from the first moments of the universe.
And why does it move like that?
They still do not know, but they believe it could have been tied to another star, forming a binary system. At some point, that other star exploded and launched it into space at full speed, like when a wheel flies off after a collision. And since then, there it goes, alone, crossing the universe.
It would not be the first time something similar is observed, but this case has enough details to make it unique.
The discovery
Every time a discovery like this happens, we think more that we know very little or nothing about what the universe hides, little by little we are deciphering the puzzle pieces but even more questions arise… how many more like this are we missing by not looking well up there?
A mystery
The orb is still there, moving at full speed, while on Earth we try to understand where it comes from and why it is the way it is. We still do not know what role it plays in the grand scheme of the universe, but what is clear is that it has the scientific community spinning in the same way!
As we said, we still have many things to learn from our universe, and in the meantime, we are capturing the signals that reach us, CWISE J1249, welcome to our story!