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  • Planet or failed star? Hubble finds strange object

    09/07/2006 7:01:32 PM PDT · by KevinDavis · 13 replies · 380+ views
    Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star beyond our Sun. Weighing in at 12 times the mass of Jupiter, the object is small enough to be a planet. The conundrum is that it's also large enough to be a brown dwarf, a failed star.
  • What's a Planet? New riddles beyond the solar system

    12/03/2006 11:21:07 AM PST · by SunkenCiv · 4 replies · 344+ views
    Science News ^ | December 2, 2006 | Ron Cowen
    Luhman and his colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph an object, about 10 Jupiter masses, orbiting the star CHXR 73. The orbiting object's mass alone would typically identify it as a heavy planet spawned from a disk that once surrounded this young star. However, the newfound object lies about five times as far from CHXR 73 as Pluto's average distance from the sun. Theory suggests that a gas-and-dust disk isn't likely to contain enough material that far from a star to make a planet... Distinguishing between brown dwarfs and planets is important, says Luhman. A brown dwarf could...