CWISE J124909+362116.0 (J1249+36 for short), may be heading out of the Milky Way. I found these articles fascinating and will be looking forward to more information on this in the future.
I looked for the magnitude, hoping we’d be able to track it with our small scopes, and never found how bright it is. I suspect we’d need something the size of the Keck telescope to observe it.
@Mitche,
Thanks for sharing another interesting discovery made possible by Citizen Science (in this case, “Backyard Worlds: Planet 9”) who’ve discovered CWISE J124909+362116.0 (nicknamed “J1249+36").
You’re right. I don’t expect to see this with my telescope since it was discovered as they: “comb[ed] through enormous reams of data collected over the past 14 years by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission” and then confirmed as UCSF Astronomy professor(s) used “the W.M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii to measure its infrared spectrum”.
This makes me wonder whether we are already using AI at scale to identify other interesting objects by creating a virtual “Comparator” against these big data sources.
Source:
University of California - San Diego. “Lone Star State: Tracking a low-mass star as it speeds across the Milky Way.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 June 2024. <Lone Star State: Tracking a low-mass star as it speeds across the Milky Way | ScienceDaily>