WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours Options

[stevesliva]

Some brown dwarf news:
http://news.discovery.com/space/could-ultr...-us-110718.html
referencing:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.4059

Large proper motion!

[hendric]

How long before BrownDwarfHunters starts, eh? That would be an interesting project!

[maschnitz]

WISE has found the first-discovered Earth Trojan asteroid. Neat!

[kto]

NEAT didn't find it, WISE did!

[nprev]

Great find! I think that the WISE dataset is gonna keep on giving for many years to come.

[Paolo]

on the historical side, Earth Trojans had been searched since at least three decades http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/1983BAAS...15..830D

[alan]

WISE discovers 100+ brown dwarfs, including 6 Y-dwarfs, one with an estimated surface temperature of 80F.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/new...se20110823.html

arxiv links
First 100 WISE brown dwarfs
Y-dwarfs


Edited to add.

Table 8 in the fist paper lists lower limits of the space density of various spectral types of brown dwarfs. The sum of the values for brown dwarfs T6 or cooler is 0.00455 per cubic parsec. For comparison the value for stars in the solar neighborhood is ~0.1 per cubic parsec.

[SolarSystemRubbl...]

NASA To Host News Conference On Asteroid Search Findings WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT on Thurs., Sept. 29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place in the NASA Headquarters James E. Webb Auditorium, located at 300 E St. SW in Washington.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids.

The panelists are:
-- Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
-- Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Tim Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.
-- Lucy McFadden, scientist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The briefing also will be streamed live, with a chat available, at:

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

For more information about the mission, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/wise

[Holder of the Tw...]

WISE is going to be reactivated in September for a three year extended mission. It will only be to survey near earth objects, half of the infrared detectors don't work anymore (no coolant).

JPL press release

Article at Spaceflight Now

[Holder of the Tw...]

According to the latest analysis of WISE data from the prime survey, there are no close by objects the size of Saturn or larger, out to about 10,000 AU. That's a little less than two light months distance. And no Jupiters out to at least 26,000 AU, over a third of a light year.

No Planet X

[Vultur]

Ah... too bad. I was hoping "Tyche" would turn out to be real...

[antipode]

Looks like K. Luhman has pulled yet another very close brown dwarf out of the WISE dataset.

At just over 2pc, 250k and under the Deuterium burning limit, this is our first ultra close free floating planet!

Abstract of discovery paper here:

http://iopscience.iop.org/2041-8205/786/2/L18

P

[Vultur]

With that mass (3-10 Jupiter masses) and temperature, why is it called a "brown dwarf" at all? I thought that was above 13 Jupiter masses... is it because it didn't form in a protoplanetary disk?

[stevesliva]

Press release here:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-127

Warm Spitzer used to confirm. ("I'm not dead yet...")