Look: NASA spots an unusual object in deep space

Old and Cold by Jennifer Walter Sep. 2, 2021 Giphy

NASA/JPL-Caltech See this colorful sphere that looks a bit like Jupiter? It’s not quite a star and not quite a planet: it’s a brown dwarf.

Brown dwarfs are bigger than planets but smaller than stars. They glow dully but lack nuclear fusion — the chemical process that causes stars to shine.

Researchers thought they understood brown dwarfs — until they looked a little closer at a mysterious space object. Its scientific name is WISEA J153429.75-104303.3, but it’s nicknamed “The Accident.” NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Giphy The Accident was discovered — on accident, of course — by a citizen scientist who spotted it in NASA’s NEOWISE telescope data.

IPAC/Caltech In 2009, NEOWISE snapped the first shot of the brown dwarf, but it took years before it was recognized as such. That’s because of its unusual properties — it’s much colder and older than other brown dwarfs, and harder to spot.

Brown dwarfs mostly emit infrared light , which is invisible to the naked eye. Because of its advanced age, The Accident was exceptionally tough to spot because of the little light it emits. NASA via Giphy

IPAC/Caltech After more recent observations , researchers predict that The Accident has been around for 10 to 13 billion years. That’s at least 2x times the average age of other brown dwarfs.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Caselden This is what The Accident looks like from 50 light-years away — just a small, dark speck moving through deep space.

IPAC/Caltech “We expected that brown dwarfs this old exist, but we also expected them to be incredibly rare . The chance of finding one so close to the solar system could be a lucky coincidence, or it tells us that they’re more common than we thought.” Federico Marocco, astrophysicist who led recent observations of The Accident

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Caselden It’s an accident that’ll forever alter our understanding of brown dwarfs — and shape our knowledge of their origins, as well.

Look: NASA spots an unusual object in deep space

Brown dwarfs are bigger than planets but smaller than stars. They glow dully but lack nuclear fusion — the chemical process that causes stars to shine.

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