[1] It is NASA's largest crowdsourcing citizen science project[2] 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.

[3][4] Initially launched by NASA Citizen Science Officer, Marc Kuchner, the principal investigation of the project was turned over to Steven Silverberg.

[6] In April 2019 Disk Detective uploaded partly classified subjects, as Zooniverse did stop to support the old platform for projects,[7] which was completed in May 2019.

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.

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.

[13] 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.

The third paper also found HD 150972 (WISEA J164540.79-310226.6) as a likely member of the Scorpius–Centaurus moving group, 12 candidates that are co-moving binaries and 31 that are closer than 125 parsec, making them possible targets for direct imaging of exoplanets.

[15] Additionally, the project published the discovery a nearby young brown dwarf with a warm class-II type circumstellar disk, WISEA J120037.79−784508.3 (W1200−7845), located in the ε Chamaeleontis association.

Found 102 parsecs (~333 lightyears) from the Sun, this puts it within the solar neighborhood, making it ideal for study since brown dwarfs are very faint due to their low masses of about 13-80 MJ.

W1200-7845 is also very young, with measurements putting it at about 3.7 million years old, meaning that—along with its relatively close proximity—it could serve as a benchmark for future studies of brown dwarf system formation.