Observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, along with two other telescopes, have shown that there is a new candidate for the coldest known star: a brown dwarf in a double system with about the same temperature as a freshly made cup of tea — hot in human terms, but extraordinarily cold for the surface of a star. This object is cool enough to begin crossing the blurred line dividing small cold stars from big hot planets, notes the ESO.
Brown dwarfs are essentially failed stars: they lack enough mass for gravity to trigger the nuclear reactions that make stars shine. The newly discovered brown dwarf, identified as CFBDSIR 1458+10B, is the dimmer member of a binary brown dwarf system located just 75 light-years from Earth.
This sequence starts with a view of the constellation of Boötes (The Herdsman) and the bright star Arcturus. As we zoom in we can see many faint stars in the Milky Way. The final view shows an artist's impression of CFBDSIR 1458+10, the coolest pair of brown dwarfs found so far.
Brown dwarfs are essentially failed stars: they lack enough mass for gravity to trigger the nuclear reactions that make stars shine. The newly discovered brown dwarf, identified as CFBDSIR 1458+10B, is the dimmer member of a binary brown dwarf system located just 75 light-years from Earth.
This sequence starts with a view of the constellation of Boötes (The Herdsman) and the bright star Arcturus. As we zoom in we can see many faint stars in the Milky Way. The final view shows an artist's impression of CFBDSIR 1458+10, the coolest pair of brown dwarfs found so far.
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