![\"Brown](\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/80beats\/files\/2010\/04\/Brown-dwarf.jpg\" "\\"Brown")
Astronomers have discovered the closest new star to us that’s been spotted in 63 years. Though “star” might be a stretch, depending upon whom you ask.<\/p>\nAstronomers have discovered the closest new star to us that’s been spotted in 63 years. Though “star” might be a stretch, depending upon whom you ask.<\/p>\n
The new find, UGPS 0722-05, is less than 10 light years from here. But sky-watchers missed it for so long because it’s a brown dwarf, a member of the murky class of celestial objects that linger between gas giant planets and low-mass stars. Brown dwarfs have so little mass that they never get hot enough to sustain the nuclear fusion reactions that power stars like the sun. Still, they do shine, because they glow from the heat of their formation, then cool and fade [New Scientist<\/em><\/a>]<\/span>. This dwarf’s temperature is somewhere between 266 and 446 degrees Fahrenheit, making it the coldest scientists have even seen. With its minimal activity, the brown dwarf<\/a> gives off just 0.000026 percent the amount of light that our sun does.<\/p>\n <\/span>Like dwarf planets, which cast aside the 9-planet solar system of our childhoods and riled Pluto-philes<\/a> everywhere, brown dwarfs don’t lend themselves to simple scientific definitions. The International Astronomical Union sets the planet\u2013brown dwarf boundary at 13 times the mass of Jupiter. But that mass limit is an imperfect definition\u2014what of brown dwarf\u2013size bodies that orbit stars, behaving themselves like supersized planets [Scientific American<\/em><\/a>]<\/span>? The nomenclature could get even messier when the details of this new find are confirmed. Study leader Philip Lucas and his colleagues suggest that the newly discovered brown dwarf is so cool that it might be the first member of a new class of ultralow temperature dwarfs. Although one fingerprint of such a new class, absorption of infrared light by ammonia, appears to be missing, only \u201ctime will tell\u201d if the discovery merits a new classification, the researchers note [Science News<\/em><\/a>]<\/span>.<\/p>\n Lucas’ team’s paper<\/a> is currently being submitted to the journal Nature<\/em>, where the peer-review process should help to verify how close the team was with its parallax<\/a> measurement of the brown dwarf’s distance. If they’re correct, UGPS 0722-05 will not only beat out the previous record-holders for proximity to Earth\u2014a binary set of brown dwarfs in the Epsilon Indi system, about 11.8 light-years away\u2014it would also suggest that perhaps more of these shadowy celestial objects linger even closer to us.<\/p>\n Related Content: Image: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/R. Hurt (SSC\/Caltech)<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n Astronomers have discovered the closest new star to us that’s been spotted in 63 years. Though “star” might be a stretch, depending upon whom you ask. The new find, UGPS 0722-05, is less than 10 light years from here. But sky-watchers missed it for so long because it’s a brown dwarf, a member of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDISCOVER: Hi Ho, Hi Ho<\/a>\u2014Brown dwarfs are the missing links between stars and planets
\nDISCOVER: Works in Progress<\/a>\u2014When it’s a planet that’s not a planet
\nBad Astronomy: Brown Dwarf T Party<\/a>
\nBad Astronomy: The Upper Limit to a Planet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>
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