Teide 1 was the first

brown dwarf Brown dwarfs (also called failed stars) are substellar objects that are not massive enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen ( 1H) into helium in their cores, unlike a main-sequence star. Instead, they have a mass between the most ...

to be verified, in 1995. It is located in the

Pleiades The Pleiades (), also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of ...

open star cluster An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of up to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age. More than 1,100 open clusters have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy, and ...

, approximately from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

. This object is more massive than a

planet A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...

(), but less massive than a

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

(0.0544 M_Sun). The radius of the brown dwarf is about that of Jupiter. Its surface

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

is 2,600 ± 150 K, which is about half that of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

. Its

luminosity Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic power (light), the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object over time. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a st ...

is 0.08–0.05% of that of the Sun. Its

age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone or something has been alive or has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...

is only 120 million years compared to the Sun's age of 4.68 billion years.

Discovery

Teide 1 was detected by

Rafael Rebolo López Rafael Rebolo López (born September 12, 1961, in Cartagena, Spain) is a Spanish astrophysicist. In October 2013 he became the director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands; IAC). He is a p ...

, María R. Zapatero-Osorio and Eduardo L. Martín in optical images obtained in January 1994 with the 0.80 meter diameter telescope (IAC-80) from the

Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is an astrophysical research institute located in the Canary Islands, Spain. It was founded in 1975 at the University of La Laguna. It operates two astronomical observatories in the Canary Islands: ...

, located at the

Teide Observatory Teide Observatory ( es, Observatorio del Teide), IAU code 954, is an astronomical observatory on Mount Teide at , located on Tenerife, Spain. It has been operated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias since its inauguration in 1964. It becam ...

on the island of

Tenerife Tenerife (; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands. It is home to 43% of the total population of the archipelago. With a land area of and a population of 978,100 inhabitants as of Janu ...

. Its cold nature was confirmed in December 1994 with the William Herschel telescope (WHT) of the Roque de los Muchachos observatory in

La Palma La Palma (, ), also known as ''La isla bonita'' () and officially San Miguel de La Palma, is the most north-westerly island of the Canary Islands, Spain. La Palma has an area of making it the fifth largest of the eight main Canary Islands. The ...

. On May 22, 1995, the article reporting their discovery was submitted to the journal Nature, which published it on September 14, 1995. Meanwhile, a similar object, Calar 3, was discovered. The brown dwarf nature of Teide 1 and Calar 3 was confirmed in 1996 following spectroscopic observations with the 10-meter diameter telescope of the W. M. Keck observatory of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii.

Characteristics

Teide 1 is a brown dwarf of

spectral type In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their stellar spectrum, spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a Prism (optics), prism or diffraction grati ...

M8 whose luminosity (log L / L☉) is approximately -3.24 ± 0.04 dex and the effective temperature is approximately 2 584 ± 100 K. Its mass is approximately 0.052

solar mass The solar mass () is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately . It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. It is approximately equal to the mass ...

Gallery

Pleiades and Teide 1.png, Teide 1 in the

as seen by the

Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), was an infrared space telescope launched in 2003. Operations ended on 30 January 2020. Spitzer was the third space telescope dedicated to infrared astronomy, f ...

References

External links

* * http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/magnitude_scale.htm {{DEFAULTSORT:Teide 1 Taurus (constellation) M-type brown dwarfs ?