A Brown Dwarf

A Brown Dwarf
Located 18 ly (6 pc) from Earth in the constellation Lepus (the Hare), Gliese 229B was the first confirmed brown dwarf ever
observed. With a surface temperature of about 1000 K, its spectrum is similar to that of Jupiter. Gliese 229B is in orbit around
a star. The overexposed image of part of its companion, Gliese 229A, appears on the left. The two bodies are separated by about
43 AU. Gliese 229B has from 20 to 50 times the mass of Jupiter, but the brown dwarf is compressed to the same size as Jupiter.
The spike of light was produced when Gliese 229A overloaded part of the Hubble Space Telescope’s electronics