Scientists from Penn State University have discovered a new "brown dwarf" star believed to be the coldest of its kind.
The team used NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope to find the star, according to a university press release.
Images from the telescopes also confirmed the object's distance, which is approximately 7.2 light-years away. This means it is the fourth closest system to our Sun.
"It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a researcher in the school's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, according to the release. "In addition, its extreme temperature should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures."
The newly discovered brown dwarf was named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, and has a temperature between minus 54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Brown dwarfs begin their lives like regular stars, as collapsing balls of gas. This difference is that they don't have the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight, according to the release.
Though it is extremely close to our solar system, the team doesn't not feel that WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is a good destination for future human space travel.
"Any planets that might orbit it would be much too cold to support life as we know it" Luhman said. "This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data. That told us it was something special."
Luhman and his colleagues were able to spot the star thanks to WISE, which surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light. Brown dwarfs and other cool objects can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow stands out.
WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is believed to be around 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
"It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the Sun's nearest neighbors," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages and operates Spitzer, according to the release. "This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer."
Research was published recently in the Astrophysical Journal.
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