Meet ‘Elegast,’ a cold, faint “super-planet” that scientists have detected using a new approach for the first time ever.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00What's not quite a star and not quite a planet, but actually hovers somewhere in between?
00:07Meet Elagast, a cold, faint super planet that scientists have detected using a new approach
00:12for the first time ever.
00:13Elagast is more massive than the largest planets, but not quite big enough to burn hydrogen
00:18in its core like a star.
00:19Because of that, it's what's known as a failed star, or a brown dwarf to be precise.
00:24Brown dwarfs are typically hard to find because they're smaller, colder, and dimmer than
00:27normal stars.
00:28They rarely show up on infrared, however with Elagast, scientists using the LOFAR radio
00:33telescope in the Netherlands have now discovered they can locate brown dwarfs via the light
00:37they emit at radio wavelengths.
00:39The research, published in the astrophysical journal Letters, could help scientists detect
00:42other elusive substellar objects, like gas giant exoplanets.