User:Meli thev

I was an astronomy volunteer and I am a co-author of multiple publications. My research area involved brown dwarfs, infrared transient events, debris around white dwarfs and occasionally active supermassive black holes.

Community Science

In 2018 to 2021 I was doing volunteer work for various projects on Zooniverse. I began with the project Higgs Hunters, but then I became more focused on astronomy and became a moderator for the Milky Way Project.^[1] I then made my first discoveries, most notably I did co-discover the infrared excess around the white dwarf star LSPM J0207+3331.^[2]^[3]

I also discovered a number of brown dwarfs in the backyard worlds project. I co-disovered several M-, L-, T- and Y-dwarfs. These include:

the Y-dwarf candidate CWISE J1531−3306^[4] (other co-discovers: Samuel J. Goodman & Arttu Sainio)
the L-type binary CWISE J0146−0508AB^[5] (other co-discovers: Nikolaj Stevnbak, Sam Goodman, Dan Caselden, and Frank Kiwy)
I co-discovered 3 M+T binaries: L26−16AB, UCAC4 307−069397AB & LP 81−30AB (see other co-discoverers in the citation).^[6]

I also worked on transient events seen in mid-infrared by the NEOWISE mission, mostly supernovae. This includes the identification of ASASSN−18ap as a possible Tidal Disruption Event,^[7]^[8] which was later studied in detail by Wang et al.^[9] Another variable object related discovery is the discovery of a bright explosion around IRAS 07572−3100, accompanied by the appearance of a new nebula in the optical and near-infrared.^[10] This transient was later independently discovered by another team and observed by Lynne Hillenbrand with the Keck Observatory.^[11]

I also identified dusty tails coming from low-mass stars in several star-forming regions, which is seen as a sign of photoevaporation.^[12]^[13] I am one of the galaxy zoo volunteers that did actively search for Voorwerpjes.^[14]

List of planetary-mass objects

I maintain a list of free-floating planetary-mass objects, which I collected from the literature. These are objects with a mass below 13 M_Jup and are not orbiting a star, brown dwarf or stellar remnant. I called the website that hosts this list "Isolated Planets Archive" and it contains over 400 objects and candidates.^[15]

Gallery research

Artist's impression of LSPM J0207+3331, which I helped to discover
Variable nebula around the outbursting star IRAS 07572−3100 (also called Thevenot-V1 on VSX)^[16]
Cometary tails in the Lambda Orionis cluster.
The L-type binary CWISE J0146−0508AB.
Mid-infrared light curve of ASASSN−18ap.

Creating images

I consider it more of a hobby to create images and gifs out of astronomical data and satellite images. Such as an asteroid in front of the crab nebula.^[17]^[18]

A comparison between AllWISE atlas images (left) and unWISE coadds (right). The image shows the star forming region IC 1590. An image I did create for wikipedia

NGC objects and other catalogues

I created images of NGC objects between May 2023 and December 2023. I mostly created images for objects that did not have any images or only had old images from the DSS/DSS2 surveys on wikimedia commons. This way I created more than 1000 images. I also created images for RCW and Barnard catalogues. Sometimes I am working on images for the IC objects. Most images were created with DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys data, but for some I used data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The software I used was mostly SAO Image DS9 and Adobe Photoshop Elements.