Star

NASA

Amateur Astronomers Help Discover Cosmic Crash

NASA Volunteer Arttu Sainio saw the star Asassn-21qj brightening, possibly due to crashing planets. Credit: Dan Caselden, NASA Astronomers found what looks like a glowing cloud of dust from a massive planetary pile-up—and NASA volunteers helped make the discovery! A recent paper in Nature describes how an international group of professional and amateur astronomers teamed up to measure the heat glow of…