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Magnificent Failures: Brown Dwarf Pair Measured by Gemini Observations

16 Marzo 2006

A team of astronomers led by Keivan Stassun of Vanderbilt University has used the Gemini South telescope and NOAO’s high-resolution infrared spectrograph Phoenix to uncover the dynamics of a pair of eclipsing brown dwarfs. The observations enabled the team to directly weigh and measure the brown dwarfs (often called “failed stars” for their intermediate mass between planets and stars). The Gemini data complemented data the team gathered from Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo.