--- title: "Scientists Discover Star Cooler Than Cigarette Lighter Flame" description: "Campfire Song Scientists have discovered the coolest star ever found to emit radio waves, a new study published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Per the study, at roughly 797 degrees Fahrenheit, the star in question — unceremoniously dubbed WISE J062309.94−045624.6 — is cooler than the average cigarette lighter flame. For contrast's sake: our Sun, […]" date: "2023-07-15" modified: "2023-07-15" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/star-cooler-cigarette-lighter" categories: - "Off-World" - "Space" tags: - "Astronomy" - "brown dwarf" - "stars" - "the digest" --- # Scientists Discover Star Cooler Than Cigarette Lighter Flame ![Scientists have discovered the coolest star ever found to emit radio waves. It's a brown dwarf, and it's not even as hot as a lighter flame.]() *Blue Light in the Dark \Image: Getty Images\* ## Campfire Song Scientists have discovered the coolest star ever found to emit radio waves, according to a [new study]() published Thursday in *The Astrophysical Journal Letters*. Per the study, at roughly 797 degrees Fahrenheit, the star in question — unceremoniously dubbed WISE J062309.94−045624.6 — is hotter than an oven, but cooler than a typical cigarette lighter flame. For contrast's sake: our Sun, a burning, bubbling, plasma-firing orb of nuclear fusion, has an estimated surface temperature of roughly 9929.93 Fahrenheit. "In some cases, \[stars\] are cooler than the smoke that's rising off our campfire — I mean, that's inspiring," Kovi Rose, a doctoral candidate in astronomy at the University of Sydney and the study's lead author, [told *The New York Times*](). "It's inspiring and humbling to understand our place in the universe." ## Song of Stars and Planets That said, WISE J062309.94−045624.6 is a very different kind of star than our Sun. As the *NYT* explains, the lighter-like cosmic body is a brown dwarf, which is sometimes sadly referred to as a "failed star." As far as stars go, it's fairly small — smaller than Jupiter — and as a result, it doesn't have nearly as much gravitational pull as is needed to perform nuclear fusion. A "brown dwarf is partway, in mass and temperature, between a star and a planet," Tara Murphy, an astronomy professor at the University of Sydney and a study co-author, told the *NYT.* But because they can't perform nuclear fusion, brown dwarfs are dimly lit, and impossible to see with the naked human eye. So, rather than rely on traditional telescopes, the researchers instead relied on data from the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder — in addition to data from instruments including the MeerKat radio telescope in South Africa and the Australia Telescope Compact Array — to sift through radio waves emitted by stars' electromagnetic fields. "Every band of that electromagnetic spectrum gives you a completely different window into the universe," Murphy told the *NYT.* "It's like a detective story." It's not the coolest star ever found — as the *NYT* points out, that would be [WISE J085510.83-071442.5](), another brown dwarf. But this latest discovery could offer some fascinating insights into the varying magnetic fields of brown dwarfs, less than ten percent of which, per the *NYT*, are known to emit radio waves. "Once we realized that it was a brown dwarf, yeah, it was definitely quite exciting," Rose told the *NYT*, "because then you kind of go down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out what the implications are, and what we can learn about the magnetic field properties." **More on stars:** [*Scientists Attempt to Explain Star with Tentacle-like Arms*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()