Scientists Find Cold Dwarf Star

Failed star has temperature a tenth of the sun's
By Mary Papenfuss,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 5, 2007 8:51 AM CDT
Scientists Find Cold Dwarf Star
'   (Associated Press)

Scientists are over the moon with the discovery of a cold brown dwarf in the Cetus constellation. The star-like body, spotted by a British team using the UKIRT telescope in Hawaii, is the coldest of its kind ever seen, the BBC reports, tipping thermometers at just 800 degrees F, a tenth the temperature of the sun.

Spotting J0034-00, which could be 50 light years away, was "a more challenging version of finding a needle in a haystack,"  noted a researcher at  Imperial College London. Astrophysicists hope the dwarf, which is a kind of failed star without enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion, will help them understand how dwarfs relate to gaseous planets. (More dwarf star stories.)

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