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THE coldest stars in the galaxy have come out of hiding, thanks to NASA鈥檚 infrared explorer WISE.
Over the course of a year, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer found six of these Y dwarfs, a class of chilly brown 鈥渁lmost stars鈥�, predicted but never before seen. The coldest, WISE 1828+2650, has shattered records, at less than 25 掳C.
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鈥淭he brown dwarfs we were turning up before this discovery were more like the temperature of your oven,鈥� says WISE team member Davy Kirkpatrick of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The Y dwarfs were found within 40 light years of the sun. Unlike our sun, they are not massive enough to fuse hydrogen.