Leveraging a Zooniverse Discovery to Bridge Our Understanding of Low- and High-mass Star Formation

This collaborative project between The College of Idaho (C of I), the Planetary Science Institute, and Iowa State University (ISU) leverages a database of >6,000 yellowballs (YBs), discovered by Milky Way Project volunteers using the zooniverse.org platform, to elucidate observationally the transition from low- to high-mass star formation. Guaranteed outcomes of this research include an analysis of the physical thresholds that delineate environments that do and do not produce massive stars (>10 M⊙) and a catalog of YB properties that will support future high-resolution studies seeking to determine the physics underlying physical thresholds. A less guaranteed, but potentially transformative, outcome is a new approach to classifying star-forming regions (SFRs) across the luminosity, mass, and evolutionary spectrum using only infrared (IR) colors. We will also provide a photometry tool we developed that has broad applications to the astronomy community, and deploy a version of this tool to provide a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) for introductory astronomy students.