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| Distance

Cosmic distance ladder

The cosmic distance ladder is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A real direct distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible only for those objects that are "close enough" to Earth...

 
| 652.32 Ly (200 pc

Parsec

The parsec is a unit of length used in astronomy. It is about 3.26 light-years, or just under 31 trillion kilometres ....

)
Lynds 1014 (LDN 1014) is a dark nebula

Dark nebula

A dark nebula is a type of interstellar cloud that is so dense that it obscures the light from the background emission or reflection nebula or that it blocks out background stars . The extinction of the light is caused by interstellar dust grains located in the coldest, densest parts of larger...

 in Cygnus

Cygnus (constellation)

Cygnus is a northern constellation lying on the plane of the Milky Way. Its name is the Latinized Hellenic word for swan. One of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and autumn, it features a prominent asterism known as the Northern Cross...

 constellation

Constellation

In modern astronomy, a constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere. These areas are grouped around asterisms, patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth's night sky....

. It may be among the most centrally condensed small dark cloud known, perhaps indicative of the earliest stages of star formation

Star formation

Star formation is the process by which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma to form a star. As a branch of astronomy star formation includes the study of the interstellar medium and giant molecular clouds as precursors to the star formation process and the study of young...

 processes. This cloud harbours at its core a very young low-mass star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

, named L1014 IRS; some astronomers have suggested that this star may be a brown dwarf

Brown dwarf

Brown dwarfs are sub-stellar objects which are too low in mass to sustain hydrogen-1 fusion reactions in their cores, which is characteristic of stars on the main sequence. Brown dwarfs have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth...

at the earliest stage of its lifetime.

External links

• http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/498742
• http://jumk.de/astronomie/special-stars/l1014.shtml
• http://www.stsci.edu/observing/phase2-public/10603.pro
• http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/2005/33/aa2411-04/aa2411-04.fig.html
• http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/sirtf-c2d-cfa/CORES-DB/L1014/L1014.html
• http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2004-20/ssc2004-20a.shtml