Free-floating failed star

This artist's conception portrays a free-floating brown dwarf, or failed star. A new study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows that several of these objects are warmer than previously thought, with temperatures about 250 to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (125 to 175 degrees Celsius).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spitzer.