Alien dwarf 'star' flashes her dazzling brown rear at stunned space boffins

Astronomers have spotted a brown dwarf almost-star glowing with a dazzling display of aurora similar to the Northern Lights and Southern Lights here on Earth – but hundreds of thousands of times brighter. A team led by Caltech has been focusing telescopes on LSRJ 1835+3259, a brown dwarf sorta-planet 20 light years from Earth …

[Vector]

"flashes her dazzling brown rear..."

So...just how do you tell a star's rear from the rest of it?

[Little Mouse]

Re: "flashes her dazzling brown rear..."

Easy - just find the front first. It's on the opposite side.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "flashes her dazzling brown rear..."

well if its new one to you just try putting in and more than likely if you hear no you probably found it.

[Ugotta B. Kiddingme]

with all the recent rapidfire advancements...

... in astronomy and astrophysics, it's an interesting and exciting time to be alive, is it not? Now, if we can just manage to settle our comparatively petty differences, humanity might one day be mature enough to venture out there and see the sights up close.

[Pascal Monett]

Hang on,

We can actually spot auroras on spatial masses light-years away now ?

<speechless>

[Muscleguy]

Re: Hang on,

Ditto. Even though at a mere 20 light years it is in our galactic back yard but even so. The technological achievement of this is mind blowing. I was born in 1965 and remember the moon shots (we got to stay up late specially to watch, which helped it being memorable). To go from that to this in my lifetime is amazing.

If you can accelerated a probe up to a decent fraction of light speed you could even envisage swinging by this in someone's lifetime (to keep the project from being forgotten).

[Youngone]

Total Confusion

Brown Dwarfs strike me as being a bit like Pluto.

They're not really stars because they don't fuse hydrogen, but they're not really planets because they don't orbit stars, (some of them don't anyway).

Also what is a Brown Dwarf that doesn't orbit a star, but has things orbiting it? Looks like a star, but isn't.

Astronomy has lots of work to do to define the things it discovers I suppose.

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Total Confusion

So are neutron stars actually stars? And what's the difference between a moon and a captured asteroid? :P

At the moment, I'd say that an object formed via cloud collapse is a (failed) star (which means if there's no companion, it's definitely a star) but if it accretes round a rocky core then it's a planet. At the low mass end, I would expect the different formation mechanisms to produce different properties, even for the same final mass.

Anyway plenty of stars don't actively fuse hydrogen. And most brown dwarf's generally have fused deuterium at some point in their life.

[Camilla Smythe]

Victory Unintentional

"If you were able to stand on the surface of the brown dwarf we observed – something you could never do because of its extremely hot temperatures and crushing surface gravity – you would sometimes be treated to a fantastic light show courtesy of auroras hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than any detected in our solar system."

Three turned to ZZ One,

"Make a note of this, One, will you?"

"Make a note of this, One, will you!!!?"

-

-

"Wow! Look at the Shimmering Aurora on Her Arse."

[Anonymous Coward]

Confused.

So, to be clear, laughing at the idea of a female exposing her arsehole to a scientist is just good fun, whereas stating - as a joke - the fact that women cry more than men is disgusting sexism for which one should be sacked ?

You hypocritical brown dwarfs are not fit to lick Tim Hunt's black hole.

[ Paris, because even she knows that betraying your mates won't get you laid. ]

[Little Mouse]

Re: Confused.

Confused? There's this thing called "context".

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

@Little Mouse

Well one was made by some journalists (in order to sell their article) and the other was made to some journalists (and some scientists, who we don't care about) and then amped up to, uh, sell articles.

That difference in context is vital in determining which is acceptable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashes "her" dazzling brown rear...?!

How are they so sure that the star in question is female anyway? And would they be making the same joke if it turned out to be a male star doing this instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

An artist's impression

Who needs telescopes, etc.

These artists seem to be able to get up real close!

[joke]