GLIESE 229BDanielle Poindexter

How Far Away Is It?

18 LIGHT YEARSLight travels at 186,000 miles per second.

A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year.

Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of kilometers (or miles) that light travels in one second, and the result is a light -year.

A light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometers or 5.88 trillion miles.

What does “B” mean?

“B” means the secondary star in a binary system.

A binary system is a system consisting

of two parts. This means that Gliese 229b is one of a system of two stars that revolve around each other under

their “mutual gravitation.”

What is Gliese 229B?

Gliese is a brown dwarf

orbiting a red dwarf star. It

is the most faint object anyone

has ever seen that orbits another

star.

What is a Brown and Red Dwarf?

EarthSky // FAQsTonight // Astronomy Essentials By Bruce McClure Dec 15, 2011 •How far is a light-year?

   

•Stars other than our sun are so far distant that astronomers refer to their distances not in terms of kilometers or miles – but in light-years. Light is the fastest-moving stuff in the universe. It travels at an incredible 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. That’s very fast. If you could travel at the speed of light, you would be able to circle the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in just one second!A light-second is the distance light travels in one second, or 7.5 times the distance around Earth’s equator. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. How far is that? Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of kilometers (or miles) that light travels in one second, and there you have it: one light-year. It’s about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).

      

Brown Dwarfs can be thought of as “failed stars.” They aren’t massive enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. After formation, they become compressed, degenerate (showing evidence of decline) objects, and start cooling, and eventually fade away. These usually look more like planets than stars.

Red Dwarfs are less than one third the mass of our sun. They are main sequence stars that aren’t ever hot enough to do helium fusion. They have an extremely long lifespan and due to this no Red Dwarfs have evolved off the main sequence yet.

Claim to Fame:

It was the first Proven Brown

Dwarf!A Brown Dwarf is an object

in space that is too hot to be a planet but too cool to become

a star. This type of star is 1300 �F or 704 � C.

Just for fun!

How does it shine? It shines from energy generated by gravitational contraction, not through nuclear reactions like stars.

Time to watch stuff happen.

How big and bright is it?

Gliese is 1/100,000 of the sun's luminosity and 20 to 50 times the mass of Jupiter.

Where is it?

It is in the constellation Lepus, the Hare. Orion’s sword points to this.

Lepus is visible at latitudes between +63° and −90°.

It is below the constellation Orion.

When can you see it?

This star is only visible in large telescopes. You can see it best in January through March.

Sources:http://www.windows2universe.org/the_universe/gliese229.html

http://www.definitions.net/definition/binaryhttp://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1995/48

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-is-a-light-year

http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/physics/research/xroa/astrophysics-1/red-and-brown-dwarfs