Baby Red Dwarf Found Just 27 Light Years Away

bazzalunatic writes "Astronomers have found an infant red dwarf star 27 light years away from Earth, and it's just 40 million years old. 'The star has been known about and studied for the past 15 years, but it wasn't realized it was so young and so close, until now,' co-author Simon Murphy, a PhD student from the Australian National University said in the story. More accurate measurements from telescopes have aided the revised distances of the star dubbed 'AP Colombae.'"

Comments

Goldfish shoals, nibbling at my toes

[blair1q]

fun, fun, fun....

Re:Goldfish shoals, nibbling at my toes

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Mods, this is not offtopic. It's a reference to the theme song of the science fiction comedy Red Dwarf. Consider your geek cards revoked.

Re:"Just" 27 light years away

[exploder]

Well, as long as we're being pedantic...let's say we never figure out how to break or dodge the light speed limit, but we do learn how to travel at 0.9c. Now this one is 30 years away (or 60 or so if you want to count acceleration at launch and landing, which I'm sure you do). And your average Milky Way star that's say 50,000 lightyears away is now...gosh, it's actually a whole hell of a lot more unreachable.