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This artwork highlights a pair of recently uncovered brown dwarf twins, named Gliese 229 Ba and Gliese 229 Bb. Credit: K. Miller/R. Hurt first observed what appeared to be a brown dwarf orbiting Gliese 229 – a red dwarf star located about 19 light-years from Earth. Since then, this brown dwarf has mystified astronomers because it appeared too dim for its mass. With 70 times the mass of Jupiter, it should have been brighter than what telescopes had observed.
“Gliese 229 B was considered the poster-child brown dwarf,” added Xuan. “And now we know we were wrong all along about the nature of the object. It’s not one but two. We just weren’t able to probe separations this close until now.” Hundreds of observations have been conducted since Gliese 229 B was discovered nearly 30 years ago, but its dimness remained a mystery to astronomers.
An artist’s conception of looking back at Sol from the binary brown dwarf system WISE 1049-5319, 6.5 light years distant. Credit: Janella Williams, Penn State University
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