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Old 07-September-2006, 07:14 PM
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Default CHXR 73 B, one of the smallest companion objects ever seen

A research team led by a Penn State University astronomer has used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to discover and photograph one of the smallest objects ever seen around a normal star beyond our Sun. Weighing in at 12 times the mass of Jupiter, the object is small enough to be a planet. The conundrum is that it's also large enough to be a brown dwarf, a failed star.

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Credit: NASA, ESA and K. Luhman (Penn State University)

Position (2000): R.A. 11h 063m 29s.3 Dec. -77° 37' 34".0
Constellation: Chamaeleon
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Old 08-September-2006, 04:42 PM
CuddlySkyGazer CuddlySkyGazer is offline
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If the object is above the deuterium-burning limit then it is a brown dwarf. If it's below, then as it is orbiting a star, it is a planet according to the Position Statement on the Definition of a "Planet" of the IAU's Working Group on Extrasolar Planets.

"Luhman and others advocate that an object is a planet only if it formed from the disk of gas and dust that commonly encircles a newborn star." But that criteria is not in the IAU position statement, which tends to suggest that is disputed!. (A lot of people think you should base a definition on what an object is, not how it came to be.)
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