Here’s the answer to a question you probably never thought to ask: how cold is the coldest star? Two-hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit. Or, as a National Geographic puts it, “no warmer than a freshly brewed cup of coffee.” Granted, it’s not the sort of place you’d want to, you know, spend vacation time, but in star terms, it’s downright chilly. So cold, in fact, that scientists suspect the planet may be able to support water on its surface.
The brown dwarf christened CFBDSIR 1458 10b is 75 light-years away. Scientists estimate its mass is between six and 15 times that of Jupiter–again, a speck of a star. The star is actually the smaller of two brown dwarfs in a binary system.
The University of Hawaii’s Michael Liu explains, “this new object is so much colder than anything else seen that it now enters the regime where it may actually have an atmosphere with water clouds.”
Liu adds that the star may cause scientists to redefine the way small stars and large planets are defined. “The most exciting aspect of this finding is that we might be on the threshold of finding a new class of objects that blurs the line between gas-giant exoplanets and brown dwarf stars previously seen–something I think that is really surprising the astronomical community.”
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