Found: A place in the universe hotter than the Sun
There’s a place in the universe that gets hotter than the surface of the Sun, and it’s not London in summer.
A team of astronomers has discovered a brown dwarf about 57 light-years from Earth, with a surface temperature that makes the Sun seem pleasant.
The new object, named WD0032-317B, was found orbiting a white dwarf star, receiving a tremendous amount of heat. Due to this heat, the brown dwarf heats up to temperatures of up to 8,000 Kelvin – that’s 7,727C to us – hotter than the surface of most stars.
In comparison, the Sun’s surface temperature is about 5,500 Kelvin, or around 5,200C.
WD0032-317B is the first brown dwarf that has been found to be receiving such a high level of extreme ultraviolet radiation.
The discovery was made by a team of astronomers led by Dr David Lafrenière of the University of Arizona. The team used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to observe WD0032-317B.
White dwarfs are the remnants of stars that have used up all of their fuel. They are very dense and have extreme gravity.
This means that the strong ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf is focused on the day side of WD0032-317B, causing it to heat up to very high temperatures.
The object was also found orbiting its white dwarf star at a distance of about 0.025 AU – astronomical units. That’s about 2.3million miles closer to the Sun than the Earth is. This can explain the extreme heat on the object’s surface.
The team’s observations showed that WD0032-317B has a day-side temperature of about 8,000 Kelvin. It also has a day-to-night temperature difference of about 6,000 Kelvin.
The discovery makes the hottest brown dwarf ever observed as they are typically very cold cosmic objects – in star terms.
But contrary to its name, this brown dwarf is quite massive in size, easily being able to fit the mass of about 80 Jupiters.
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