* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: 2MASS J09393548-2448279

Blobrana · L

Astronomers Find the Two Dimmest Stellar Bulbs
The new record-holder for dimmest known star-like object in the universe goes to twin "failed" stars, or brown dwarfs, each of which shines feebly with only one millionth the light of our sun.
Previously, astronomers thought the pair of dim bulbs was just one typical, faint brown dwarf with no record-smashing titles. But when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed the brown dwarf with its heat-seeking infrared vision, it was able to accurately measure the object's extreme faintness and low temperature for the first time. What's more, the Spitzer data revealed the brown dwarf is, in fact, twins.

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Blobrana · L

The two faintest star-like objects ever found, a pair of twin "brown dwarfs" each just a millionth as bright as the sun, have been spotted by a team led by MIT physicist Adam Burgasser.

"These brown dwarfs are the lowest power stellar light bulbs in the sky that we know of" - Adam Burgasser, an assistant professor of physics at MIT

And these extra-dim brown dwarfs may be the first discoveries of the predominant type in space.

"In this regime we expect to find the bulk of the brown dwarfs that have formed over the lifetime of the galaxy. So in that sense these objects are the first of these 'most common' brown dwarfs, which haven't been found yet because they are simply really faint. Both of these objects are the first to break the barrier of one millionth the total light-emitting power of the sun" - Adam Burgasser.

He is lead author of a paper about the discovery appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Dec. 10.
Astronomers had thought the pair of dim bulbs was just a single typical, faint brown dwarf with no record-smashing titles. But when Burgasser and his team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to observe the brown dwarf in infrared light, it was able to accurately measure the object's extreme faintness and low temperature for the first time. The Spitzer data revealed that what seemed to be a single brown dwarf is in fact twins.

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