News Release Archive: Entire Collection
June 15, 2004 09:00 AM (EDT)
News Release Number: STScI-2004-51
Ultra-cool Diminutive Star Weighs In
The power of the some of the world's biggest telescopes has been brought to bear to directly measure the mass, for the first time, of one of the smallest stars ever seen in the universe. Barely the size of the planet Jupiter, the dwarf star weighs in at just 8.5 percent of the mass of our Sun.
Read more:Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, H. Bouy (Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik; ESO Garching, Germany; and LAOG, Grenoble, France), G. Duchêne (LAOG, Grenoble, France and UCLA, USA), R. Köhler and W. Brandner (Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany), J. Bouvier and X. Delfosse (LAOG, Grenoble, France), T. Forveille (LAOG, Grenoble, France; and CFHT, Hawaii, USA), E. Martin (IAC, Spain), A. Ghez and C.-E. McCabe (UCLA, USA), F. Allard and I. Baraffe (CRAL, Lyon, France), G. Basri (UC Berkeley, USA), and L. Close (Steward Obs., Arizona, USA)