Two Stars and Their Brown Dwarf Companions (IMAGE)

Penn State

Two Stars and Their Brown Dwarf Companions

Caption

Using infrared photographs obtained with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered two very cold brown dwarfs orbiting the stars HD 3651 (left) and HN Peg (right). These brown dwarfs have masses of only 20 and 50 times the mass of Jupiter and have orbits that are more than 10 times larger than Pluto's orbit. HD 3651 and HN Peg are in the Sun's neighborhood of the Galaxy, with distances of only 36 and 60 light years from the Sun.

Credit

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / K. Luhman (Penn State University) / B. Patten (Harvard-Smithsonian)

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