NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest “brown dwarf” known—a dim, star-like body that surprisingly is as frosty as Earth’s North Pole.

The gravitational compression energy of such dim stars is insufficient for a thermonuclear reaction.

The object is 7.2 light-years away from Earth, and has a chilly temperature between minus -48 to -13 degrees Celsius. 

“It's very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close,” said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, University Park. “And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures.”