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A rather fanciful piece of art showing the brown dwarf Oph 98A (upper left) orbited by a planetary-mass companion. Separated by 30 billion km, they would each appear as dots from the other. Credit: Thibaut Roger / University of Bern

The weirdest binary: Planet and not-a-star barely orbit each other

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

Artwork depicting a magnetic brown dwarf; particles moving along the field lines hit the atmosphere and cause it to glow with an aurora. Credit: ASTRON/Danielle Futselaar

A blast of radiation reveals a nearby cold brown dwarf

By Phil Plait 2 years ago

The coolest brown dwarf ever seen, WISE 1828+2650 (circled), isn't even as warm as a human body. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

WISE finds coolest brown dwarfs ever seen!

By Phil Plait 3 years ago

Artwork depicting a solitary brown dwarf with an aurora. Credit: Chuck Carter, Caltech, NRAO/AUI/NSF

An aurora glows over a (possible) rogue planet

By Phil Plait 4 years ago

Combined visible light image from the Gemini observatory (blue) and SMA submillimeter light (red) show the complex hourglass shape of the gas and dust expanding from away from Nova Vulpeculae 1670. Credit: ESO/T. Kamiński

What do you get when a white dwarf eats a brown dwarf? A very, very energetic cosmic belch.

By Phil Plait 4 years ago

Artwork depicting the red dwarf/brown dwarf binary system called Scholz’s stars, which passed near Earth about 70,000 years ago (the Sun appears as a bright star to the left). Credit: Michael Osadciw/University of Rochester

Did a close pass by an alien star system millennia ago rain down comets on the solar system?

By Phil Plait 5 years ago

HD 4113 is the faint star dead center in the image. You might think it’s not much to look at… but when you look closely, it contains multitudes. Literally. Credit: Wikisky / SETI

The star HD 4113 is way, way more than meets the eye

By Phil Plait 5 years ago

A brown dwarf orbits a white dwarf in this artist's rendition.

WD 1202 is a weird binary: One of the stars used to be inside the other one!

By Phil Plait 5 years ago

CFBDSIR 2149-0403: A mystery lurks 1800 trillion kilometers from Earth

By Phil Plait 6 years ago