It may seem like the Sun is stationary while the orbiting planets are moving, but actually the Sun is also orbiting around the Milky Way Galaxy at an impressive rate of about 220 kilometers per second — almost half a million miles per hour. As swift as that may seem, when a faint red star was discovered moving even faster across the sky, clocking in at a speed of about 1.3 million miles per hour (600 kilometers per second), scientists took notice. Located just 400 light-years from Earth, this rare stellar speedster is the first “hypervelocity” very low mass star found. More remarkably, this star may be on an unusual trajectory that could cause it to leave the Milky Way Galaxy altogether based on research led by University of California (UC) San Diego Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Adam Burgasser. This hypervelocity star was found thanks to the efforts of citizen-scientists and a team of astronomers from around the country using several telescopes, including two in Hawaii – W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii Island and the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on the peak of Haleakala in Maui. So how did the volunteer citizen-scientists contribute? This project capitalized on the keen ability of humans, who are evolutionarily programmed to look for patterns and spot anomalies in a way that is unmatched by computer technology. Volunteers tagged what they perceived to be moving objects in the large data files and when enough volunteers tagged the same object, astronomers investigated and eventually made the discovery.