Jul 30 1995
From The Space Library
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a brown dwarf, the object of a 30-year search. Twenty to 50 times the size of Jupiter and too hot to be classified as a planet, GL229B is a small companion to the cool red star Gliese 229 in the constellation Lepus. It is near the theoretical limit (eight percent of the mass of the Sun) where a star has enough mass to sustain nuclear fusion. The brown dwarf was first sighted using the 60-inch observatory on Mt. Palomar. Scientists identified it in October 1994. Follow-up observations were made by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 on November 17, 1995. Another Hubble observation six months from now will yield an exact distance to GL229B.
The difference between planets and brown dwarfs is based on how they are formed. A planet is formed from dust while a brown dwarf would have gravitationally collapsed out of a large cloud of hydrogen. (NASA Release 95-212; NY Times, Sep 14/95; Fla Today, Jul 30/95 & Sep 24/95; Newsweek, Dec 11/95; Av Wk, Dec 4/95; Science, Dec 1/95)
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