NASA citizen scientists help discover 'supernova' escaping Milky Way 16,09,344 km per hour

A team of citizen scientists, working with professional astronomers on NASA's Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, have made a remarkable discovery: a faint, fast-moving object that is escaping the gravitational pull of the Milky Way galaxy. This hypervelocity object, named CWISE J124909.08+362116.0 (CWISE J1249), is the first of its kind with a mass similar to or less than a small star.

CWISE J1249 was initially spotted by veteran Backyard Worlds volunteers Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden while examining images from NASA's WISE (Wide Field Infrared Explorer) mission. Follow-up observations using ground-based telescopes confirmed its existence and unique characteristics.

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

CWISE J1249 is hurtling out of the Milky Way at an astonishing speed of approximately 1 million miles per hour. Its low mass makes it difficult to classify definitively. It could be a low-mass star, or if it's not actively fusing hydrogen, it would be considered a brown dwarf, a celestial object that falls between a gas giant planet and a star.

Observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii revealed that CWISE J1249 has a significantly lower concentration of iron and other metals compared to typical stars and brown dwarfs. This suggests that it is an ancient object, likely formed during the early stages of our galaxy's evolution.

Possible Explanations for its Speed

Scientists have proposed two possible scenarios for CWISE J1249's extreme velocity:

Supernova Ejection: It may have originated from a binary system with a white dwarf that exploded as a supernova after siphoning off too much material from its companion.

Black Hole Encounter: It may have come from a dense star cluster called a globular cluster, and a close encounter with a pair of black holes could have flung it outward.

"When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster," says Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

This discovery highlights the power of citizen science, as passionate volunteers played a crucial role in identifying this unique object. The research team, led by Professor Adam Burgasser at the University of California, San Diego, included contributions from other citizen scientists and student astronomers.

Further analysis of CWISE J1249's elemental composition will provide more insights into its origins and the forces that propelled it into intergalactic space.