A brown dwarf, or "
failed star", is an object more massive than a planet yet too small to trigger the thermonuclear reactions that power stars.
The body, about eight times as heavy as Jupiter, resides next to a
failed star, a brown dwarf dubbed 2M1207 (SN: 5/7/05, p.
But the mass that a brown dwarf accumulates is not enough to ignite thermonuclear reactions in its core, resulting in a
failed star that is very cool.
To a layman like me, it seems almost impossible that light reflected from a body that lies "much farther from the star than Pluto does from the sun" could be seen from Earth at a distance of 450 light years, when Pluto, only 6 light hours away, reflects so little light to Earth ("Stellar Question: Extrasolar planet or
failed star?" SN: 4/9/05, p.
Barely more massive than a planet itself, a
failed star 500 light-years from Earth is nevertheless cloaked in a disk of gas and dust from which planets could coalesce.
Upon his success, McNeil reflected: "I find it simply stunning that a $1,000 scope, which I literally pieced together on my kitchen table, was able to detect a 21st-magnitude object whose identity as a
failed star was announced only days before I arrived at TSP."
Kevin Luhman, Penn State's Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics classifies this object as a "brown dwarf" - an object that formed just like a star out of a massive cloud of duct and gas, but the mass that it accumulates is not enough to ignite thermonuclear reactions in its core, resulting in a
failed star that is very cool.
According to International Astronomical Union standards, the heavier body is a
failed star known as a brown dwarf.
At both Keck II and Gemini North, Liu and his colleagues took images of a
failed star, or brown dwarf, orbiting a young, sun-like star at a distance that could be just slightly greater than that at which Saturn orbits our sun.
Washington, July 30 (ANI): Astronomers have discovered a very young brown dwarf (or
failed star dubbed "PZ Tel B") in a tight orbit around a young nearby Sun-like star (PZ Tel A).
The object, known as GJ 758 B, could be either a large planet or a "
failed star," also known as a brown dwarf.