---
title: "Disk Detective"
chunk: 1/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Detective"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:14:17.830855+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Disk Detective is the first NASA-led and funded-collaboration project with Zooniverse. It is NASA's largest crowdsourcing citizen science project aiming at engaging the general public in search of stars, which are surrounded by dust-rich circumstellar disks, where planets usually dwell and are formed. Initially launched by NASA Citizen Science Officer, Marc Kuchner, the principal investigation of the project was turned over to Steven Silverberg.

== Details ==
Disk Detective was launched in January 2014, and was expected to continue until 2017. In April 2019 Disk Detective uploaded partly classified subjects, as Zooniverse did stop to support the old platform for projects, which was completed in May 2019. The project team began working on Disk Detective 2.0 that was then launched May 24, 2020, utilizing Zooniverse's new platform.
The project invites the public to search through images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and other sky surveys. Disk Detective 1.0 compared images from the WISE mission to the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Version 2.0 compares WISE images to 2MASS, Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), Australia's SkyMapper telescope, and the unblurred coadds of WISE imaging (unWISE).
The images in Disk Detective have all been pre-selected to be extra bright at wavelengths where circumstellar dust emits thermal radiation. They are at mid-infrared, near-infrared and optical wavelengths. Disks are not the only heavenly objects that appear bright at infrared wavelengths; active galactic nuclei, galaxies, asteroids and interstellar dust clouds also emit at these wavelengths.  Computer algorithms cannot distinguish the difference, so it is necessary to examine all images by "eye" to make sure that the selected candidates are stars with disks, and not other celestial objects.
After the initial and subsequent discovery of several Peter Pan disks—M dwarf primordial gas-rich circumstellar disk systems that retain their gas 2 to 10 times longer than that of other disks—by the Disk Detective science team, research began to understand how these unusual systems fit into disk development. On September 29, 2022, NASA announced version 2.1 of the project, releasing new data containing thousands of images of nearby stars located in young star-forming regions and to provide a better view of "extreme" debris disks—circumstellar disks that have brighter than expected luminosity—in the galactic plane. The 2.1 dataset targets stars with brightness at a wavelength of 12 μm in an effort to discover more Peter Pan disks.

== Classification ==
At the Disk Detective website, the images are presented in animated forms which are called flip books. Each image of the flip book is formatted to focus on the subject of interest within a series of circles and crosshairs.
Website visitors—whether or not they are registered member users of Zooniverse—examine the flip book images and classify the target subjects based on simple criteria. Disk Detective 2.0 elimination criteria include whether the subject "moves" off the center crosshairs in 2MASS images only, if it moves off of crosshairs in two or more images, if the subject is not round in Pan-STARRS, SkyMapper, or 2MASS images, if it becomes extended beyond the outer circle in WISE images, and if two or more images show objects between the inner and outer circles. The ideal target is classified as a "good candidate," and is further vetted by the advanced research group into a list of "debris disk of interest" (DDOI) candidates. Particular interest is paid to good candidates that have two or more images where objects other than the subject are present within the inner circle only.
The selected disk candidates will eventually become the future targets for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope. They will also be the topic for future publications in scientific literature.

== Seeking objects ==
The disks that NASA's scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center aim to find are debris disks, which are older than 5 million years; and young stellar object (YSO) disks, which are younger than 5 million years.

== Advanced user group ==
Volunteers who have registered as citizen scientists with Zooniverse can join an exclusive group on the Disk Detective project, called "advanced users" or "super users," after they have done 300 classifications. Advanced users might then further vet candidates marked as "good," compare candidate subjects with literature, or analyze follow-up data. This advanced user group is similar to other groups that have formed in citizen science projects, such as the Peas Corps in Galaxy Zoo.

== Discoveries ==