Coldest Star and Close Neighbor of the Sun Discovered

If you don't know you wont know. I stumbled across this today and thought id share for those who have not heard.

Astronomers at Penn State University have discovered a brown dwarf star that is believed to be the coldest of its kind- as frosty as Earth's North Pole. Interestingly, this Brown Dwarf star, called the WISE J085510.83-071442, was found 7.2 light years away making it the fourth closest neighbor to our Sun.

The frosty neighbor was discovered with the help of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes.

Brown dwarfs are known to kickstart their lives as stars in the form of withering bundles of gas. But these brown dwarfs do not have the mass to burn the nuclear fuel and emit starlight. The newly found frosty neighbor has a chilly temperature that varies between minus 48 to minus 13 degree Celsius.
Previous coldest brown dwarfs discovered, also using WISE, were close to room temperatures.
"Any planets that might orbit it would be much too cold to support life as we know it" Luhman said.
"This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data. That told us it was something special. The closer a body, the more it appears to move in images taken months apart. Airplanes are a good example of this effect: a closer, low-flying plane will appear to fly overhead more rapidly than a high-flying one."
The researchers were able to spot the new neighbor as WISE surveyed the complete sky twice in infrared light and some of the areas were even observed over three times. The thermal glow of the cold brown dwarfs is seen only in infrared light.

I feel so blessed to live in such a time of discovery, now only if we would begin to actually push hard to explore the unknown.

Article Science World Report

a reply to: ebb3ka94

Niburu!!!?

But seriously, this is fascinating. It just makes you think what might sit closer to our solar system that we have been unable to detect so far.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: ebb3ka94

Niburu!!!?

But seriously, this is fascinating. It just makes you think what might sit closer to our solar system that we have been unable to detect so far.

LMAO! I knew someone had to say it, but I didn't think it would be the first reply to the thread.

To the OP - Very cool news/info. S&F. Thx for posting it.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: ebb3ka94

Niburu!!!?

But seriously, this is fascinating. It just makes you think what might sit closer to our solar system that we have been unable to detect so far.

Right?! The new stuff we learn every week makes you begin to rethink what we actually know.

sooo...
not that I believe in niburu ala sitchen
(see my siggy thread )
but:
what other browm dwarves are yet to be discovered out there
and where?
sandf OP

what i got today.

www.jpl.nasa.gov...

It's relatively close, but also relatively far away. (Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 ly away)

This discovery is exciting, but it also pushes the envelope for WISE. For anyone still hoping that there is a Sun's binary, or a brown dwarf on the edge of the Solar System, or an undiscovered giant gas planet in the Solar System - the fact that WISE hasn't found any, but is finding these very cold bodies very far away, shows that they most probably don't exist. It's like missing a bonfire a few meters away when you're scanning with very sensitive infrared equipment for candlelight miles away.

The articles say it may be as small as 3 Jupiter masses. Being also ice-cold, and at whopping 7.2 ly away, it's really a big achievement for WISE!

Here it is, as seen by WISE in 2010. ( Image created from data at skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov... )


This animation from JPL shows how the brown dwarf moved between the times different images were taken:

originally posted by: ebb3ka94

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: ebb3ka94

Niburu!!!?

But seriously, this is fascinating. It just makes you think what might sit closer to our solar system that we have been unable to detect so far.

Right?! The new stuff we learn every week makes you begin to rethink what we actually know.

Rethinking what we actually know is the definition of science.

originally posted by: RAY1990
a reply to: ebb3ka94

Niburu!!!?

But seriously, this is fascinating. It just makes you think what might sit closer to our solar system that we have been unable to detect so far.

No brown dwarfs. WISE, the very spacecraft that discovered this ruled out any close (less than a few of light years) brown dwarfs.

WISE also discovered a pair of brown dwarfs closer than this one, yet still further away than Alpha Centauri:



Someone asked what other brown dwarfs are yet to be discovered?

Answer: Lots.

In Astronomy there is a general rule, the smaller the object, the more of them there are.

There are more asteroids than moons.

There are more moons than planets.

There are more planets than stars.

There are (probably) more brown dwarfs than larger red dwarfs. (they're just very hard to detect).

There are more red dwarfs than K or G class stars like our Sun.

There are more G class stars like our sun than massive and super massive stars like Sirius A, Polaris, Betelgeuse, Arcturus, etc.

a reply to: wildespace
Maybe the time is not right, seems things are being unveiled lately more and more in every area.

improving technology could make the difference when it comes to turning up a solar companion. According to Luhman, there is a small chance that a distant companion to the sun could have been missed if it was aligned close to a bright star. Data from the bright star could then have overwhelmed the companion, much as the sun overpowers a flashlight beam.

A companion could also have escaped detection by WISE if it has a relatively small mass and lies extremely far away. The smaller and dimmer an object is, the harder it becomes to spot as it draws farther away.

"I think people are amazed by the fact that we can detect galaxies billions of light-years away, and yet there are parts of our own solar system that remain uncharted and unexplored," Luhman said.

www.space.com...

"I think astronomers will continue to search for a distant companion to the sun with every new, deeper survey," Kevin Luhman of the University of Pennsylvania told Space.com by email. Luhman, who studies low-mass stars and "failed stars" known as brown dwarfs, recently published the results of his search for Planet X using

www.space.com...

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: wildespace
A companion could also have escaped detection by WISE if it has a relatively small mass and lies extremely far away.

This newly found object is relatively small (might be only 3 Jupiter masses!), as cold as ice, and lies further away than Proxima Centauri. You might recall recent anouncement that the data from WISE survey has been examined fully, and no such companion/Nibiru/Nemesis has been found. If we are being realistic, the only things left to discover in the outer reaches of the Solar System are small bodies, at most planet-sized. The recent results put an upper limit on the size of objects, depending on the distance, that WISE could miss.

a reply to: wildespace

is it possible that they did find something and didn't tell us or had images altered? Or is that not possible?

a reply to: wildespace

If we are being realistic, the only things left to discover in the outer reaches of the Solar System are small bodies, at most planet-sized. The recent results put an upper limit on the size of objects, depending on the distance, that WISE could miss. -

I won't count it over until all scientists stop looking for it. I really doubt our tech is so perfect we won't miss anything at this stage.

a reply to: ebb3ka94

Reminds me of Asimov's "Nemesis" star - so close, but overlooked because it was hidden behind a dark nebula.

originally posted by: 3n19m470
a reply to: wildespace

is it possible that they did find something and didn't tell us or had images altered? Or is that not possible?

What would be the point?

originally posted by: Char-Lee
a reply to: wildespace

If we are being realistic, the only things left to discover in the outer reaches of the Solar System are small bodies, at most planet-sized. The recent results put an upper limit on the size of objects, depending on the distance, that WISE could miss. -

I won't count it over until all scientists stop looking for it. I really doubt our tech is so perfect we won't miss anything at this stage.

They pretty much have stopped after the WISE data. There are more compelling things to look for now that we know the Sun has no companion star, not even an tiny little brown dwarf one.

Anything else we find between us and say, the distance of Alpha Centauri are likely to be planet sized.

originally posted by: JadeStar

originally posted by: 3n19m470
a reply to: wildespace

is it possible that they did find something and didn't tell us or had images altered? Or is that not possible?

What would be the point?

Exactly. Astronomy needs all the funding they can get in my honest opinion, to do something like that would be idiotic to say the least.

That's what I love about the Astronomers and people with a genuine interest in the fields associated here at ATS, your all so down to
Earth ( no pun intended).

P.S. Thanks for that short youtube video you posted, I've sent it to my young cousin who wants to get into astronomy and he loved it. He was under the notion that we have discovered most of what we'll see except asteroids etc. Hopefully he thinks a bit more on just how much more we can discover and how little we have actually seen.