Astronomers, including Carnegie's Yuri Beletsky, took precise measurements of the closest pair of failed stars to the Sun, which suggest that the system harbors a third, planetary-mass object.The research is published as a letter to the editor in Astronomy & Astrophysics available online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.1303.Image of Luhman 16ABCredit: NASA / JPL / Gemini Observatory / AURA / NSFFailed stars are known as brown dwarfs and have a mass below 8% of the mass of the Sun—not massive enough to burn hydrogen in their centers. This particular system, Luhman 16AB, was discovered earlier this year and is only 6.6 light-years away.After the discovery announcement, several teams of astronomers, including the one with Beletsky, used a variety of telescopes to characterize the neighbouring couple.After two-months of observations and extensive data analysis, Beletsky's team, led by Henri Boffin of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), found that both objects have a mass between 30 and 50 Jupiter masses. By comparison, the Sun has a mass of about 1,000 Jupiter masses.Location of Luhman 16ABCredit: Wise Telescope"The two brown dwarfs are separated by about three times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Binary brown dwarf systems are gravitationally bound and orbit about each other.
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