Scientists Find Cold Dwarf Star

Scientists are over the moon with the discovery of a cold brown dwarf in the Cetus constellation. The star-like body, spotted by a British team using the UKIRT telescope in Hawaii, is the coldest of its kind ever seen, the BBC reports, tipping thermometers at just 800 degrees F, a tenth the temperature of the sun.

Spotting J0034-00, which could be 50 light years away, was "a more challenging version of finding a needle in a haystack,"  noted a researcher at  Imperial College London. Astrophysicists hope the dwarf, which is a kind of failed star without enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion, will help them understand how dwarfs relate to gaseous planets. (More dwarf star stories.)