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Date: 07 September 2006 Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope Depicts: Red and Brown Dwarf Stars Copyright: NASA, ESA, and K. Luhman (Penn State University, USA) Show in archive: true
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star. Astronomers believe the object is a brown dwarf because it is 12 times more massive than Jupiter. The brown dwarf candidate, called CHXR 73 B, is the bright spot at lower right. It orbits a red dwarf star, dubbed CHXR 73, which is a third less massive than the Sun. At 2 million years old, the star is very young when compared with our middle-aged 4.6-billion-year-old Sun.