Orbit of Ultra-cool Brown Dwarf Binary

An international team of astronomers using the world's biggest telescopes have directly measured the mass of an ultra-cool brown dwarf star and its companion star for the first time. Barely the size of the planet Jupiter, the dwarf star weighs in at just 8.5 percent of the mass of our Sun. This is the first ever mass measurement of a dwarf star belonging to a new stellar class of very low mass ultra-cool dwarf stars called L-dwarfs. The observation is a major step towards our understanding of the types of objects that occupy the gap between the lightest stars and the heaviest planets.

In this animation we first see a part of our own Solar System for a size comparison. It is seen that the brown dwarf binary has an orbit slightly smaller than Jupiter's orbit. We then take a closer look at the individual observations in the order they were made: Hubble/WFPC2 (25 April 2000), Gemini North (7 Feb. 2002), Hubble/ACS (21 Oct. 2002), VLT/NACO (18 Feb. 2003), VLT/NACO (22 Mar. 2003), KECK/NIRC (4 Dec. 2003) and HST/STIS (9 Jan. 2004).


Credit: ESA/NASA and Herve Bouy (Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik/ESO, Germany)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Orbit
• ultra
• cool
• brown
• dwarf
• binary

[mcelfreshiii]

@damianpoirier math, it does a misinterpretation good.

[TheVideoSupreme]

@TedLee810 let's hear that after september till then i'll be an avid star gazer

[TedLee810]

@ruskiytank5 There's no such a thing as Nibiru!

[Untchabll]

@ruskiytank5 Guys thats jupiter!!

[ReductioAdAbsurdum]

Wow, I'm shocked at how much clearer Keck's image is compared to Hubble's. I sort of assumed, as I image most of the lay public does, that Hubble is the best we've got. But Keck (presumably as a result of it's adaptive optics, which I just read about) trounces it.

[damianpoirier]

failure to note that these images are ALL recent allows some misinterpretation. Please tell me how we can have more than have an orbit IMAGED. That's right. This is not a long period binary in any sense of the term. This body has at most a 10-15 year orbit. Tops.

[RobnTrip]

I know some of you are hoping this is nibiru, but this is NOT in our solar system, read the side notes!

[Juank2341]

i didn't understand

[yiotos]

cool a brown dwarf! omg! that other plannet made of gas is SOOO big

[ruskiytank5]

yep..thats nibiru alrite...