Close, cold neighbour of Sun discovered

[IDemo]

WASHINGTON: Astronomers have discovered the coldest star of its kind - as frosty as Earth's North Pole - just 7.2 light years away.

Using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes a Pennsylvania State University astronomer spotted the "brown dwarf" - a dim, star-like body.

Images from the space telescopes pinpointed the object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun.

"It is very exciting to discover a new neighbour of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/et-cetera/close-cold-neighbour-of-sun-discovered/articleshow/34290711.cms

[Squinch]

1. Close enough to see into our windows! This is cool. Pun not intended. Thanks for it.

[struggle4progress]

6. I bet Sarah Palin could see Russia from there!

[Thor_MN]

2. I assume it's proximity had something to do with finding it

As our telescopes get better, we find things that we previously haven't been able to see. I wonder how much cold chunky stuff is out there?

[Wounded Bear]

3. Well, arguably this could be part of the 'dark matter'...

that has kind of stymied astronomers for a while. Maybe there are just far more stars out there than we thought. We just can't see them.

[Thor_MN]

5. We seem to have gaps in detection.

We can see hot things easily. Gas clouds absorb some light. In the middle are cold chunks. Rogue planets, probably systems that didn't have enough mass to light the star. Hell, it wasn't too long ago that we we saying that there were "probably" planets around other stars.

Hopefully, we will send up some really long baseline telescope arrays and maybe settle what "Dark Matter" is.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. This would make a good premise for a SF novel ... oh wait ...

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20707/20707-h/20707-h.htm#book3