The object that holds the record for the darkest star-like object in the universe is a pair of twin 'failed' stars, also known as brown dwarfs. They glow weakly with a brightness of only a quarter of the sun's light.
Previously astronomers thought that the 'dim light' pair was just a faint brown dwarf with nothing special. But when the Spitzer Space Telescope (NASA) observed this brown dwarf in infrared searching for heat, it was able to accurately measure the ultimate opacity and low temperature of the object for the first time. Besides, Spitzer's data revealed that that brown dwarf is actually a twin.
Adam Burgasser of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, said: 'Both of these objects are the first objects to break the total energy level due to light emitted by a quarter of a million suns'. Burgasser is currently the lead author of a new paper about the discovery, the paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Brown dwarfs are inadequate objects in the universe. They are free-floating pneumatic balls, but too cold and too light to become a star. It is too hot and too big to be a planet. The name 'brown dwarf' comes from the fact that this tiny stellar entity changes color through the time it cools, so they don't have any color. In fact, most brown dwarfs are reddish if we can observe them with the naked eye. The light emitted weakly also showed that it was difficult to find them. The first brown dwarf was only discovered in 1995. While today we have known hundreds of such stars, astronomers still think that in the universe, many brown dwarfs are waiting for them. we discover.
The newly discovered pair of faint twin brown dwarfs is famous because their rare opacity will probably not be remembered. They were called 2MASS J09393548-2448279 after conducting the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, or '2MASS' , which was partially funded by NASA for the first time in 1999.
Astronomers have recently used Spitzer's extremely sensitive infrared eyesight to learn more about the object, which is still thought to be a single brown dwarf. The data revealed an environment of about 565 to 635 Kelvin or (560 to 680 degrees F) . It has hundreds of times the temperature of Jupiter, it is still too cold compared to stars. In fact, 2MASS J09393548-2448279, or 2M 0939 for short, is one of the coldest star-like entities identified so far.
To calculate the brightness of an object, researchers must first determine the distance of the object with the earth. After three years of accurate measurements using the Anglo-Australian observatory in Australia, they concluded that 2M 0939 is the fifth closest brown dwarf to Earth, 17 light-years away from the constellation Antlia. With this distance, thanks to the Spitzer telescope, astronomers have learned that it is both cold and extremely dark.
But there is one thing that keeps them worried. The brightness of the brown dwarf is twice that of what they expected in a brown dwarf with such a temperature. So what is the answer? The object must have twice the surface area. In other words, it is a pair of twins, each of which is only half as bright as the overall brightness and has about 30 to 40 times the mass of Jupiter . Both objects emit less than a million times the light of the sun, and at least a billion times dimmer than visible light.
"These brown dwarfs are the two weakest star bulbs in the universe that we know so far," Burgasser said . Like energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, they emit most of the light at a narrow band wavelength, in this case infrared. "
According to the authors, there are even more faint brown dwarfs scattered throughout the universe, mostly too fuzzy to be detected through surveys of the sky. NASA's upcoming wide-range infrared market survey can scan the sky with infrared waves, promising to explore hundreds of hidden objects like this.
Davy Kirkpartrick, co-author of an article from NASA's Infrared Analysis and Processing Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said: 'The study of brown dwarfs is intended to detect temperature, mass and The brightness that nature can reach. Research will have us knowing more about the path of brown dwarf formation and development. '
Other authors of the paper include: Chris Tinney (University of New South Wales, Australia), Michael C. Cushing (University of Hawaii, Manoa), Didier Saumon (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Mark S. Marley (Ames Research Center NASA, Moffett Field, Calif., And Clara S. Bennett (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).