Star Smaller Than Some Planets Found

Abhishek writes "Astronomers have found the tiniest full-fledged star known, an object just 16 percent bigger than Jupiter. It is smaller than some known planets that orbit other stars. The star is a companion to a Sun-like star toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. It was found and measured by observing changes in the light output of the system when the smaller star passes in front of the larger star from our vantagepoint. This would give a better idea of brown dwarfs or failed stars. The star has been named OGLE-TR-122b. This discovery also marks the possibility of stars that look strikingly like planets."

Comments

Re:Interesting...

[selectspec]

The article is misleading confusing "size" with "mass". This new star has 95 times the mass of Jupiter. However, it's density is so great that its physical size is only slightly larger. Density is the trigger key for fusion.

Re:Aren't neutron stars "stars"?

[LokieLizzy]

Not quite. Actually, not at all. A sun-like star doesn't end its life cycle with a nova burst, or anything like that. Rather, it swells into a red giant, and eventually *slowly* puffs out its outer layers and forms a planetary nebula, with a white dwarf at its center. Stars that (go) Nova are typically several times larger than our sun, and stars that go supernova can be hundreds of times larger than our Sun (hence their names: red or blue supergiants). Sirius (brightest star in the night sky) is an example of a blue supergiant, while Antares (the heart of the Scorpion) is a red supergiant. After supernovaing, it's *these* stars that can form neutron stars or black holes. But not our sun, or stars in close mass to our sun -- those form planetary nebulae, and white dwarves.

Furthermore, neutron stars aren't dead -- they often radiate a hell of a lot of energy. Those that do are called *Pulsars* -- that's where all those directional radio/x-ray waves come from in deep space -- they spin like lighthouses, you see.