NASA finds another Brown Dwarf in our Solar Neighborhood! - THORnews 420 Technical Difficulties

• Report rights infringement
• published: 20 Apr 2016
• views: 3130

Bad guys zapped my super duper editing program, so I am going full speed lowfi today, so get ready to talk about all the planet IX and Planet X and Brown Dwarf news that is coming at us fast and furious. They found a 2nd Brown Dwarf in the TW Hydrae Star formation. Crazy. Strange days, indeed. God bless everyone, T @newTHOR on twitter https://www.facebook.com/thornewsgo Article http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6424 Lone Planetary-Mass Object Found in Family of Stars Young Brown Dwarf in TW Hydrae Family of Stars The object, called WISEA J114724.10?204021.3, is thought to be an exceptionally low-mass "brown dwarf," which is a star that lacked enough mass to burn nuclear fuel and glow like a star. In fact, these lonely worlds, which sit quietly in the darkness of space without any companion planets or even a host sun, might outnumber stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The surprising discovery begged the question: Where did these objects come from? Are they planets that were ejected from solar systems, or are they actually light-weight stars called brown dwarfs that formed alone in space like stars? A new study using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, WISE, and the Two Micron All Sky Survey, or 2MASS, provides new clues in this mystery of galactic proportions. Scientists have identified a free-floating, planetary-mass object within a young star family, called the TW Hydrae association. The newfound object, termed WISEA J114724.10-204021.3, or just WISEA 1147 for short, is estimated to be between roughly five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. WISEA 1147 is one of the few free-floating worlds where astronomers can begin to point to its likely origins as a brown dwarf and not a planet. Because the object was found to be a member of the TW Hydrae family of very young stars, astronomers know that it is also very young -- only 10 million years old. planets require at least 10 million years to form, , WISEA 1147 is likely a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs form like stars but lack the mass to fuse atoms at their cores and shine with starlight. Astrophysical Journal. Of the billions of possible free-floating worlds thought to populate our galaxy, some may be very low-mass brown dwarfs, while others may in fact be bona fide planets, kicked out of nascent solar systems Tracing the origins of free-floating worlds, and determining whether they are planets or brown dwarfs, is a difficult task, precisely because they are so isolated. "We are at the beginning of what will become a hot field - trying to determine the nature of the free-floating population and how many are planets versus brown dwarfs," said co-author Davy Kirkpatrick of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, or IPAC, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Astronomers found WISEA 1147 by sifting through images taken of the entire sky by WISE, in 2010, and 2MASS, about a decade earlier. They were looking for nearby, young brown dwarfs. relative to other stars over time. The closer an object, the more it will appear to move against a backdrop of more distant stars. By analyzing data from both sky surveys taken about 10 years apart, the close objects jump out. The brown dwarf WISEA 1147 was brilliantly "red" in the 2MASS images (where the color red had been assigned to longer infrared wavelengths), which means that it's dusty and young. After more analysis, the astronomers realized that this object belongs to the TW Hydrae association, which is about 150 light-years from Earth and only about 10 million years old. That makes WISEA 1147, with a mass between about five and 10 times that of Jupiter, one of the youngest and lowest-mass brown dwarfs ever found. Interestingly, a second, very similar low-mass member of the TW Hydrae association was announced just days later (2MASS 1119-11) by a separate group led by Kendra Kellogg of Western University in Ontario, Canada. Planets around other stars, called exoplanets, are barely perceptible next to their brilliant stars. By studying objects like WISEA 1147, which has no host star, astronomers can learn more about their compositions and weather patterns. "We can understand exoplanets better by studying young and glowing low-mass brown dwarfs," said Schneider. "Right now, we are in the exoplanet regime." NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. In September 2013, WISE was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. The 2MASS mission was a joint effort between the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and JPL. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.