| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Exploring Our Galaxy’s Ancient Brown Dwarfs
A brown dwarf from the thick-disk or halo is shown. Although astronomers observe these objects as they pass near to the solar system, they spend much of their time away from the busiest part of the Galaxy, and the Milky Way’s disk can be seen in the background. Credit: John Pinfield
As the name implies, a brown dwarf is small… only about 7% the size of the Sun. As far as stellar senior citizens go, they’re cool. Zipping along through space at speeds of 100 to 200 kilometers per second, they may have formed back when our galaxy was young – perhaps 10 billion years ago. Now a team of astronomers headed by Dr. David Pinfield at the University of Hertfordshire has identified a pair of the oldest brown dwarfs known… a set of orbs which could be the harbinger of a huge amount of new, unseen objects. (…)
Read the rest of Exploring Our Galaxy’s Ancient Brown Dwarfs (603 words)
© tammy for Universe Today, 2013. |
Permalink |
No comment |
Post tags: brown dwarf, WISE
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/106386/exploring-our-galaxys-ancient-brown-dwarfs/
