Saturday, June 9, 2012

Checking Out The Neighborhood With WISE

Hey Space Placers!

Wow. What a great few days of astronomy-meia events we had with the Venus transit. Getting back into the swing of things while getting over a horrible chest cold....UGH!

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been checking out the local neighborhood surrounding the Sun looking for small brown dwarf neighbors. These failed stars were thought to be as populous as normal stars but the new WISE survey found out that within the 30 light years searched, brown dwarfs are about 1 to 6. That is one brown dwarf to every 6 normal stars.

The WISE survey will continue and as more results become available the brown dwarf-normal star ratio may change. But such research is essential to learn more about the make up of not only our neighborhood but the Milky Way Galaxy as well.

Read More About It: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-164

Sky Guy in VA



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