IS THIS ANOTHER PLANET X MISCONCEPTION? ONLY TIME WILL TELL!Source: European Southern Observatory
Photo Left: Artist's impression of the SCR 1845-6357 stellar system. The small red star is shown in the background while the newly discovered brown dwarf is at front. (Image courtesy of European Southern Observatory)
Posted: March 22, 2006
Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, an international team of researchers discovered a brown dwarf belonging to the 24th closest stellar system to the Sun. Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects that are neither stars nor planets. This object is the third closest brown dwarf to the Earth yet discovered, and one of the coolest, having a temperature of about 750 degrees Centigrade. It orbits a very small star at about 4.5 times the mean distance between the Earth and the Sun. Its mass is estimated to be somewhere between 9 and 65 times the mass of Jupiter.
