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There’s a newly observed object in the sky called WISEA J153429.75-104303.3 — more affectionately known as “The Accident.” The Accident is a brown dwarf, a ball of gas that never quite grew large enough to start nuclear fusion and become a star — but it’s cold, strange, and unlike any other brown dwarf we’ve seen. This weird brown dwarf is the first of its kind that we’ve detected, and it’s changing the way astronomers search for the smallest stars in our galaxy.
The Accident’s discovery was, well, a happy accident. Its discoverer, citizen scientist Dan Caselden, a participant in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, was looking for another moving object when he spotted something unusual. Follow up observations with Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope revealed some strange properties: it’s a different color than other brown dwarfs we know, and it’s one of the coldest ones we’ve seen. What could be making this brown dwarf so different?
Continued below.
A failed star known as "The Accident" is changing the way we look at the galaxy
The Accident’s discovery was, well, a happy accident. Its discoverer, citizen scientist Dan Caselden, a participant in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, was looking for another moving object when he spotted something unusual. Follow up observations with Keck Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope revealed some strange properties: it’s a different color than other brown dwarfs we know, and it’s one of the coldest ones we’ve seen. What could be making this brown dwarf so different?
Continued below.
A failed star known as "The Accident" is changing the way we look at the galaxy
