News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Lonely ‘homeless’ planet found for the first time.

Re:Lonely ‘homeless’ planet found for the first time by albertzeyer on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @11:50AM (#4784126)
It says that the image is a photo. Is that really so?

It says that the planet has a temperature of approx 400 degrees Celsius. That is hot. I would have expected it to be deadly cold, esp since it never managed to initiate nuclear reactions in its center. Why is that?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Lonely ‘homeless’ planet found for the first time by rpm4321 on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @11:56AM (#4784159)
There's no way that's a photo, given that this is the best we can do of Ceres, a relatively close planetoid:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Ceres_opt...

UPDATE: Here's its wikipedia page. 100 light years way from earth, so there is no way it's a photo. Also, wikipedia calls it a brown dwarf, which would explain the temperature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFBDSIR2149-0403

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Lonely ‘homeless’ planet found for the first time by martey on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @12:01PM (#4784186)
The source of the image, an European Southern Observatory press release (mentioned in the HBL article, linked in the Wikipedia article) gives it a title of "Artist’s impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9".

http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1245/

[ Parent | on HN ]