Brown dwarf star Teide 1 - Brown dwarf Teide 1 - Artist view of the...

Brown dwarf star Teide 1 - Brown dwarf Teide 1 - Artist view of the brown dwarf star Teide 1. Discovered in 1995 in the Pleiades cluster, about 55 times the mass of Jupiter, this brown dwarf is represented here in the sky of a young exoplanet lit by the star. This is how Teide 1 might appear from the surface of a hypothetical, March - like planet. Discovered in 1995, Teide 1 is a type of mysterious object called a brown dwarf (failed star or super planet). Bigger than a planet, but smaller than a star, this brown dwarf is about 400 light years from the Earth in the Pleiades star cluster. It is thought that Teide 1 has the mass equivalent of about 55 Jupiters, which is considered large for a brown dwarf. Teide 1 is massive enough, and hence hot enough, to sustain lithium fusion in its core, but is unable to initiate hydrogen fusion like our sun. Teide 1 is probably only about 120 million years old (compared to our sun's age of 4.5 billion years) and shines at a temperature of 4,000o F, less than half as hot as the surface of our sun. In this image a young planet orbits Teide 1 from distance of about four million miles. The planet has acquired enough atmosphere to host clouds and put a lower limit on size of meteors that reach its surface (the smaller ones burn up before reaching the ground), but it is still very early in its evolution. Teide 1 looms large in this planet's sky, but in fact Teide 1's diameter is only about twice that of Jupiter's. All brown dwarfs are roughly the size of Jupiter - - the more massive brown dwarfs are simply more dense. As for this planet, it is very unlikely that life will ever evolve here due to its host's relatively short life span; in just another billion years Teide 1 will have cooled to a modest 1,700o F