By John Roach Researchers have made a new discovery near the Orion constellation. Orion might want to tighten his pants. In fact, these objects do not have a central star at all. A star cluster is an association of stars that were born from the same parent molecular cloud. The researchers then studied three of their objects with spectrographs on the Keck telescopes in Hawaii to make sure they were indeed planets and not brown dwarfs, objects that are too massive and thus too hot to be considered a planet but that don't have enough heft to host hydrogen fusion at their cores as stars do.
Brown dwarfs can emit light that looks reddish from Earth if it is veiled by a dusty cloud.
The discovery of the 18 planet-like objects in the sigma Orionis cluster is reported in the October 6 issue of Science . Researchers have also found over 50 extrasolar planets. To learn more, visit the Extrasolar Planet Search web site.