Astronomers have discovered that what was believed to be a single brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, is actually a double system, revolutionizing our understanding of such celestial bodies.
Using the GRAVITY instrument to combine light from four telescopes, astronomers successfully spatially resolved the two brown dwarfs, while CRIRES+ measured the Doppler shift of gas in each.
The twin brown dwarfs orbit each other every 12 days, separated by a distance roughly 16 times that between the Earth and the Moon.
Gliese 229B was initially puzzling due to its unexpected dimness, leading astronomers to question its single object status and ultimately revealing its true nature as two.
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