What the solar neighborhood might look like after WISE finishes its mission

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Since we're on the subject of brown dwarfs today, here's a video from December showing what our solar neighborhood might look like after WISE is finished its mission. This is based on the expected frequency of brown dwarfs (they are expected to be even more frequent than red dwarfs, which are otherwise the most common stars in the universe), so these are imaginary objects but this approximately what the area around us should look like after it has finished its mission. Note how much more exciting an area to explore it becomes, with a high probability of one or more brown dwarfs in closer proximity even than Proxima Centauri. The one given here is at 2.9 light years away, but for all we know one could be a single light year away from us.



WISE is now almost done scanning 50% of the sky.

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