NOIRLab Launches Cool Neighbors Citizen Science Project

Have we found all of the Sun’s closest neighboring stars? Our census of the solar neighborhood, especially its population of cold and faint brown dwarfs, is still growing at a brisk clip (Kirkpatrick et al. 2021). Brown dwarfs, intermediate in mass between the smallest red dwarf  stars and the largest giant exoplanets, provide unique laboratories for revealing the low-mass terminus of star formation, and by proxy, the atmospheric properties of Jupiter-like giant exoplanets.