These 'failed stars' orbit so closely it took 29 years to tell they were a pair

Two red and brown spheres shrouded in red and brown smoke against a black background .

A well-studied cosmic object has stunned astronomers. The "failed star" Gliese 229B has been revealed to be two so-called "brown dwarfs" that are closely orbiting each other rather than just one.

The revelation means that Gliese 229B is a "first-of-its-kind" tight brown dwarf binary, increasing the hope other such exotic systems dwell in the Milky Way just waiting to be discovered. The finding also solves a long-standing mystery about Gliese 229B, explaining why this brown dwarf appears too dim for its mass.