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WISE2010-040-rotate180.jpg (534 × 524 pixels, file size: 92 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: That green dot in the middle of this image might look like an emerald amidst glittering diamonds, but it is actually a dim star belonging to a class called brown dwarfs. This particular object, named "WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9" after its location in the sky, is the first ultra-cool brown dwarf discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. WISE is scanning the skies in infrared light, picking up the signatures of all sort of cosmic gems, including brown dwarfs.

The mission's infrared vision makes it particularly good at picking brown dwarfs out of a starry sky. This view shows three of WISE's four infrared channels, color-coded blue, green and red, with blue showing the shortest wavelengths of infrared light and red, the longest. The methane in the atmospheres of brown dwarfs absorbs this color-coded blue light, and the objects themselves are too faint to give off a lot of the red light. That leaves green. As can be seen in this picture, the little green dot of a brown dwarf stands out against the sparkly, hotter blue stars.

The brown dwarf is located 18 to 30 light-years away in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis, or the giraffe; in fact, the brown dwarf is positioned right on the neck of the giraffe, adorning it like an emerald necklace. This is one of the coolest brown dwarfs known, with a temperature of roughly 600 Kelvin, or 620 degrees Fahrenheit.
Date
Source Cropped from 1240 x 590 Wise image: WISE2010-040
Image rotated 180 degrees to match Wikisky: 04 58 54 +64 34 53
See also http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13444
Author NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
This image or video was catalogued by Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: PIA13444.

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Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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9 November 2010

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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current23:22, 9 November 2010Thumbnail for version as of 23:22, 9 November 2010534 × 524 (92 KB)Kheider{{Information |Description = Image of the first ultra-cool brown dwarf (WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9) discovered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. It is the green dot and

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