What is a brown dwarf? - NASA
What is a brown dwarf? Answer: In order to understand what is a brown dwarf, we need to understand the difference between a star and a planet. It is not easy to tell a star from a planet when you look up at the night sky with your eyes. However, the two kinds of objects look very different to an astronomer using a telescope or spectroscope.
Brown Dwarfs - NASA
The brown dwarf, called Gliese 229B (GL229B), is a small companion to a cool, red star called Gliese 229. This binary star system is located 19 light-years from Earth. GL229B is estimated to be in the range of 20 to 50 times the mass of Jupiter; thus, GL229B is too massive and hot to be classified as a planet, but too small and cool to shine ...
StarChild: The Dwarf Planet Makemake - NASA
It takes 310 Earth years for this dwarf planet to make one orbit around the Sun. Makemake was first observed in 2005 by a team of astronomers led by Michael Brown. Its codename was Easterbunny. It was officially recognized as a dwarf planet by …
StarChild: The Dwarf Planet Eris - NASA
Eris, the largest known dwarf planet, was first detected in data collected in October of 2003. It was not identified until January of 2005. Mike Brown and his team of astronomers discovered what was considered to be the 10th planet while doing observations at …
StarChild: Eris - NASA
Eris is the largest known dwarf planet in our solar system. It is a little larger than Pluto. Eris is about 2400 kilometers wide. Eris was first found by a team of astronomers at Palomar Observatory in California. Mike Brown and his team found Eris in 2003. It was not until 2005 that Eris was identified as another possible planet in our solar ...
StarChild: Quasars
The word quasar is short for "quasi-stellar radio source". This name, which means star-like emitters of radio waves, was given in the 1960s when quasars were first detected. The name is retained today, even though astronomers now know most quasars are faint radio emitters.
StarChild: Haumea - NASA
Haumea was first discovered in 2004. It was accepted as one of our dwarf planets by the International Astronomical Union in 2008. Before being officially named, it was called Santa by one of its discovery teams because they first noticed it on December 28th. Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth.
StarChild: The Dwarf Planet Pluto - NASA
Pluto was re-classified as a dwarf planet in August 2006. Until the fly-by of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, little was known about Pluto. It was believed to be composed of rock and ice.
Clyde Tombaugh - NASA
Astronomers had been looking for a ninth planet since 1905. In February of 1930, Clyde Tombaugh found proof of a new object in our solar system. He named the object Pluto. From its discovery until 2006, Pluto was called a planet. However, as scientists learned more about it and other objects like it, it was changed to being called a dwarf planet.
StarChild: The planet Jupiter - NASA
Jupiter is a large gas planet whose rapid rotation causes the planet to flatten at the poles and bulge at the equator.