Backyard Worlds uses images from NASA's WISE that mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011.

New Delhi: A group of NASA citizen scientists has spotted a mysterious object traveling through space at a speed of 16,09,344 kmph. Scientists used images from NASA's WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, mission to find the object. It has been named CWISE J1249 and is zooming through the galaxy. “I can't describe…the level of excitement,” said one of the scientists.

According to NASA, the citizen scientist Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has helped discover an object spinning so fast that it escapes the galaxy's gravity and goes into space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object to have the mass of a small star or less.

Backyard Worlds uses images from NASA's WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, mission, which mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011. It was reactivated in 2013 as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer). and retired on 8 August 2024.

“I can't describe the level of excitement,” said Kabatnik, a citizen scientist based in Nuremberg, Germany. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have already been recorded.”

CWISE J1249 is zooming out of the galaxy at about 1 million miles per hour. But it also stands out for its low mass, which makes it difficult to classify it as a celestial object. It may be a low-mass star, or if its core is not steadily mixing with hydrogen, it will be considered a brown dwarf, placing it somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.

Scientists will take a closer look at the basic structure of CWISE J1249.

(Content credit: science.nasa.gov)