Two Brown Dwarfs And An EXO!!

 

There is something very exciting going on only a little over six light years from Sol.  Two Brown Dwarfs in a binary orbit seem to be harboring an exoplanet.   Exciting point one....Brown Dwarfs and in a binary orbit.  

Brown Dwarf stars are a curious animal.  First for a star, they are tiny.  For the most part hardly larger than a gas giant planet, in Luhman 16AB case, astronomers determined that the mass of these brown dwarfs is about 40 times that of Jupiter,  but very much smaller than a star.  Plus they are miserly with their energy putting out mostly infrared energy, some even so cool that if you could stand in the gravity, you could walk on the surface for the most part barefoot.  

But to find two in a binary orbit is a bit rare.  Whats more, it would seem that there is a planet in the mix as well.  

Discovered by astronomers using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft, Luhman 16AB is threefold more interesting as this system is only 6.6 light years away from Earth.  If further investigation confirms the previous findings, Luhman 16AB's planet would be the closest exoplanet yet discovered. 

More available on the Dvice.com article HERE

NASA's Neowise Reactivated

NASA's Neowise (previously WISE) comet and asteroid hunting spacecraft, which during its mission

discovered more than 34,000 asteroids and  158,000 more object throughout the solar system during its prime mission in 2010 and early 2011.

The spacecraft was reactivated after more than two years in hibernation.  In its new mission Neowise will  assist NASA in identifying  potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.  NEOWISE also can assist in detecting asteroids that could be considered potential targets for future exploration missions.

In preparation of its renewed mission, Neowise released its first set of test images.

Check out the complete NASA article HERE

The Planet that Wouldn't Go Away: The Search For Planet X

Boy talk about an idea that just refuses to go away is this strange fascination with a dark companion, if you would, to the solar system. Be it a brown dwarf, black hole or gas giant, people continue to hold dear the idea that something large and mysterious lives out past the Ort cloud. In a recent IO9 article I was reading about data from the Wise space telescope that is suggesting that NASA supposedly having proof of a giant, Jupiter-sized planet orbiting the Sun way beyond Pluto.

Two astronomers, John Matese and Dan Whitmire have theorized that a planet, one they call Tyche, does indeed exist and they base this on observations of long duration comets. The strange thing about these comets is that each one's orbits have perturbations that can be accounted for if one accepts a gas giant constantly adding little variations.

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy would like nothing more than for there to be a planet out there but instead of being reactionary, Phil takes a some what more critical stance in his Discovery article here