D-Bone
Aug 9th '06, 10:20 AM
Don't look now because you can't see it anyway. Astronomers have pinpointed the faintest object yet detected beyond our solar system: a brown dwarf 100 million times dimmer than the Sun.
At just 16.2 light years from Earth, the dwarf ? named DEN 0255-4700 ? is not just incredibly dim, but also nearby.
Its discovery is part of an effort to understand the Milky Way at large by first getting a better idea of what's in our own neighborhood, a sphere about 160 light years wide.
"It's a transitional object between a star and a fully-fledged planet," said astronomer Rene Mendez of the Universidad de Chile in Santiago.
DEN 0255-4700 lacks the mass, and therefore the gravity, to generate the thermonuclear reactions that make a true star, he explained.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/08/08/dimstar_spa.html?category=space&guid=20060808173030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000
At just 16.2 light years from Earth, the dwarf ? named DEN 0255-4700 ? is not just incredibly dim, but also nearby.
Its discovery is part of an effort to understand the Milky Way at large by first getting a better idea of what's in our own neighborhood, a sphere about 160 light years wide.
"It's a transitional object between a star and a fully-fledged planet," said astronomer Rene Mendez of the Universidad de Chile in Santiago.
DEN 0255-4700 lacks the mass, and therefore the gravity, to generate the thermonuclear reactions that make a true star, he explained.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/08/08/dimstar_spa.html?category=space&guid=20060808173030&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000