BROWN dwarfs are hard to spot, but a Japanese PhD student has found the
largest collection ever seen, in the constellation Cygnus about 2000 light years
from Earth. With less than 0.08 times the Sun’s mass, brown dwarfs are too small
and cold to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, so they grow steadily dimmer.
The Hubble Space Telescope spotted dozens in the Orion Nebula last year, but now
Yumiko Oasa of the University of Tokyo has counted hundreds more in an image
taken by the Subaru Telescope of a gas cloud surrounding a 100,000-year-old
supergiant star.
To continue reading, today with our introductory offers
Advertisement
More from ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓÆµ
Explore the latest news, articles and features
Popular articles
Trending ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓÆµ articles
1
The best new science-fiction books of June 2026
2
Pancreatic cancer halted by virus injection in three patients
3
Glaciers in the 'roof of the world' have suddenly started melting
4
Does gravity create reality? A shocking path to a theory of everything
5
Mathematical AI helps researchers crack 50-year-old problem
6
Aim high but don't shoot for the moon, mathematicians advise
7
How a radical new view of life could reveal its origin – and aliens
8
Photons behave very strangely if you try to cut them
9
Virus from marine animals is causing weird eye problems in people
10
Earliest use of anaesthetics uncovered in Chinese doctor’s tomb



