Dancing Duo Brown Dwarfs (IMAGE)
Caption
This artwork highlights a pair of recently uncovered brown dwarf twins, named Gliese 229Ba and Gliese 229Bb. Gliese 229B, discovered in 1995, was the first-ever confirmed brown dwarf, but until now astronomers thought they were observing a single body not two. New observations from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile revealed that the orb is two brown dwarfs tightly orbiting around each other every 12 days (as indicated by the orange and blue orbital lines), with a separation only 16 times larger than the distance between Earth and the Moon. The brown dwarf pair orbit a cool M-dwarf star every 250 years.
Credit
K. Miller, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC)
Usage Restrictions
Credit must be given to the creator. Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted. No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
License
CC BY-NC-ND