Artist impression of brown dwarf Gaia-5b

Gaia-5b is a brown dwarf orbiting the Gaia-5 star, around 134 light-years away from Earth. With a mass of around 21 Jupiters, Gaia-5b is more massive than a planet but too light to sustain nuclear fusion to be a star. This artist impression visualises a portion of the orbital motion as determined by Gaia’s astrometric data. The star and planet are not to scale.

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[Image description: This image shows a red star as a fiery globe in the middle of a dark starry sky. The star has black spots on its surface, and has flares around it. To the right of the star, a smaller round object is portrayed, the left side of which is lighter than the right side. The object has two stripes. Coming from the object’s backside is a half elliptical red beam, making it seem like the object is in motion around the star.]