New Cosmic Find Might Be the First of Its Kind

Meet ‘Elegast,’ a cold, faint “super-planet” that scientists have detected using a new approach for the first time ever.

Transcript

00:00what's not quite a star and not quite a planet but actually hovers somewhere in between meet

00:07elegast a cold faint super planet that scientists have detected using a new approach for the first

00:13time ever elegast is more massive than the largest planets but not quite big enough to burn hydrogen

00:18in its core like a star because of that it's what's known as a failed star or a brown dwarf

00:23to be precise brown dwarfs are typically hard to find because they're smaller colder and dimmer than

00:27normal stars they rarely show up on infrared however with elegast scientists using the lofar

00:32radio telescope in the netherlands have now discovered they can locate brown dwarfs via

00:36the light they emit at radio wavelengths the research published in the astrophysical journal

00:41letters could help scientists detect other elusive sub-stellar objects like gas giant exoplanets