Slashdot Mirror
NASA Discovers 7th Closest Star
Thorfinn.au says "Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. 'WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision,' said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground.'"
40 lightyears! I hereby dub these "ninja stars", for their ability to sneak up on us like this.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Based on how many cold dwarf stars we have found so far, there may be stars like this one within 2 LY or less. In which case they would make for a great candidate for a high speed interstellar probe.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Closer than you're comfortable with, and colder than you can possibly imagine.
I'll share with you a technique that has helped me immeasurably throughout my life: when I find a glaring mistake in someone's output, something that they just should not have overlooked, I first assume that I've misunderstood something and the mistake is actually mine and check again. 90% of the time, it saves me from looking like a jackass.