L1014 is a
dark nebula
A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection ...
in the
Cygnus constellation
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
The first constellati ...
. It may be among the most centrally condensed small dark clouds known, perhaps indicative of the earliest stages of
star formation
Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space—sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or "star-forming regions"—Jeans instability, collapse and form stars. As a branch of astronomy, sta ...
processes. This cloud harbors at its core a very young low-mass
star
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...
named
L1014 IRS; some astronomers have suggested that this object may be a
brown dwarf
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main sequence, main-sequence stars. Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 Jupiter mass, times that of Jupiter ()not big en ...
or even a
rogue planet at the earliest stage of its lifetime.
References
External links
The Starless Core That Isn't// Spitzer Image, Release Date: 11/09/04
// NASA 11.09.04
Cygnus (constellation)
Dark nebulae
{{nebula-stub