Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
These are a pair of brown dwarf stars, a term that is really a misnomer because they are not necessarily brown and are not stars.
I will let NASA explain: “Brown dwarfs are neither planets nor stars. They form like stars out of collapsing clouds of gas and dust, but they don’t have enough mass to ignite nuclear burning in their cores and become full-blown stars. They are similar to Jupiter in that they are cool balls of gas, but they are warmer and heavier. Astronomers say that the universe is littered with these cosmic misfits, but because they are so dim, they are hard to find.”
What I find amazing about them is how silent they look. That is what I think they should be called: silent stars. Cold, collapsed, small. Something about these particular bodies in space gives me chills.
You must log in to post a comment.