Latest Brown dwarf Stories
British scientists have opened a new window on the Universe with the recent commissioning of the Visitor Instrument ULTRACAM on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. ULTRACAM is an ultra fast camera capable of capturing some of the most rapid astronomical events. It can take up to 500 pictures a second in three different colours simultaneously. It has been designed and built by scientists from the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick (United Kingdom),...
Astronomers Confirm the First Image of a Planet Outside of Our Solar SystemESO -- An international team of astronomers reports today confirmation of the discovery of a giant planet, approximately five times the mass of Jupiter, that is gravitationally bound to a young brown dwarf. This puts an end to a year long discussion on the nature of this object, which started with the detection of a red object close to the brown dwarf. In February and March of this year, the astronomers took new images...
New Young Sub-stellar Companion Imaged with the VLT ESO -- Since the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun, there are now more than 150 candidates of these so-called exoplanets known. Most of them are detected by indirect methods, based either on variations of the radial velocity or the dimming of the star as the planet passes in front of it (see ESO PR 06/03, ESO PR 11/04 and ESO PR 22/04). Astronomers would, however, prefer to obtain a direct image...
RAS -- UK scientists have made the first X-ray observation of wave-like variations in a flare that erupted on a distant dwarf star. By studying the fluctuations in the flare, the team has been able to calculate that the loop of superhot gas associated with the eruption stretched over a distance of 250,000 km 20 times the diameter of the Earth.The discovery is based upon many years of studying the coronas the searingly hot outer atmospheres - of the Sun and more distant stars. Astronomers have...
Very Large Telescope Finds Planet-Sized Transiting StarESO -- An international team of astronomers have accurately determined the radius and mass of the smallest core-burning star known until now. The observations were performed in March 2004 with the FLAMES multi-fibre spectrograph on the 8.2-m VLT Kueyen telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile). They are part of a large programme aimed at measuring accurate radial velocities for sixty stars for which a temporary brightness...
VLT Finds Young, Very Low Mass Objects Are Twice As Heavy As Predicted ESO -- Thanks to the powerful new high-contrast camera installed at the Very Large Telescope, photos have been obtained of a low-mass companion very close to a star. This has allowed astronomers to measure directly the mass of a young, very low mass object for the first time. The object, more than 100 times fainter than its host star, is still 93 times as massive as Jupiter. And it appears to be almost twice as heavy as...
