The sky looks still. It isn't.
Real data: Barnard's Star, WISE 2010 and SPHEREx 2026, 4.4–5 µm. Tap to open it.Show any patch of sky
Real NASA images only. Anything we draw is labelled SIMULATED.
Live options
Built in your browser from NASA/IPAC's public cloud copy, 1–3 MB per image.
Where they are in the sky
Drag to turn. Tap a dot to open it. Dashed line: the ecliptic, where the planets travel.
Targets
The five challenge targets, Pluto, and a control galaxy.
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Image settings
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Light
Dates
Overlays
Spot the wanderer
Markers hide. Tap what moved.
Brightness in each frame vs the star's own average. Shaded band = noise (4% in the control galaxy, 10% for saturated stars). Hollow dots = saturated star, measured from its glow.
One dot per frame: brightness vs wavelength. Shades are dates; if they separate, the object changed.
Every frame, linked to its original NASA file (about 65 MB). "Flagged" = pixels SPHEREx marked unreliable.
| Date (UTC) | Detector | λ (µm) | Bandwidth | Flagged | Target flux (µJy) | Release | Source |
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Draws a pretend planet into these real images, moving as parallax and its orbit would. SIMULATED
Could SPHEREx really see Planet X?
Probably not. Planet Nine would be about magnitude 22–25 in visible light (Brown & Batygin 2016); SPHEREx reaches about 18.4 per channel after two full years (Crill et al. 2020). That gap is a factor of 25 or more (approximate: visible and infrared scales differ). Our dot is drawn far brighter so you can see how it moves. Sources: How it works.