Coldest star-ever found! And it is emitting radio waves

A cold star called WISE J0623 was discovered to be producing radio waves. The star is also known as a brown dwarf star which is located about 37 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Monoceros, according to Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The brown dwarf is too small to be a regular star and too large to be a planet. However, the size of the star is similar to the planet Jupiter which has a magnetic field more powerful than our Sun’s, according to the Conversation.

About the coolest radio star

The WISE J0623 temperature is stated to be 700 Kelvin (or 420 degrees Celsius), according to the researchers. With the help of the Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope, the team detected the "high-proper-motion ultracool dwarf. It is rare to find a brown dwarf star due to its size and its low brightness, however, it was located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara at the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia where the telescope is located. The telescope has 36 antennas, each one measuring 39 feet in diameter.

How did researchers find the radio star?

The researchers found the radio star among three million radio sources. They used “circularly polarised radio emission” from their previous study to locate the brown dwarf. During the study, they focused on the fact that stars and pulsars are the sole astronomical objects identified as significant emitters of circularly polarized light, which led them to WISE J0623.

Through radio wave analysis, WISE J0623 has been recognized as the coolest brown dwarf ever detected, displaying a unique phenomenon of continuous radio emission. With the help of the same search technique, scientists may also discover even more colder brown dwarfs in future surveys.