At last: The coldest ever brown dwarf, right, was found hiding beside a brighter star 75m light years away
The two brown dwarf stars stunned astronomers when they were spotted through a set of three high-powered telescopes.
Both of them are about the same size as Jupiter but the smaller, more distant, star has a surface temperature of around 100 degrees.
The incredibly cool temperature - the same as a freshly boiled cup of tea - makes it the coldest one in the night sky.
A warmer and brighter companion had originally obscured the brown dwarf which has been named CFBDSIR J1458+1013B.
But with new, more powerful telescopes, astronomers were able to see the star, which is almost five times dimmer and 130 degrees cooler than the previous record.
The brown dwarf may represent a new class of cosmic objects straddling the division between stars and planets.
'We were very excited to see that this object had such a low temperature, but we couldn't have guessed that it would turn out to be a double system and have an even more interesting, even colder component,' said star-gazer Philippe Delorme of the Institut de planétologie et d'astrophysique de Grenoble which studied the brown dwarf.
Cosmos: The star is imperceptible among its brighter, hotter white dwarf cousins
Stars, such as their cousins, white dwarfs, can do this and consequently can burn for more than 4.5billion years at a temperature of 5,500C.
What separates brown dwarfs from huge planets is not yet defined. However, planets are generally not big enough to generate their own heat by fusing deuterium.
The brown dwarf may be the first evidence of a new type of star, called a 'Y spectral' object, that more closely resembles a planet.
CFBDSIR J1458+1013B is bluer than is typical of brown dwarf, which are usually have a varied red or brownish hue.
It was first identified by astronomers at the Keck II and Canada-France-Hawaii telescopes, located near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea mountain.
Researchers at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope measured its ultra-low temperature.
However, CFBDSIR J1458+1013B's record-holding days may already be numbered as fellow satellite, the Spitzer Space Telescope, recently spotted two similar stars await precise temperature measurements.
'At such temperatures we expect the brown dwarf to have properties that are different from previously known brown dwarfs and much closer to those of giant exoplanets,' astronomer Michael Liu of the University of Hawaii told Wired.com
'It could even have water clouds in its atmosphere.'
Advance: The telescopes at the summit of Mauna Kea muntain, Hawaiii, spotted the new star
mmmmmm..strange so-called Elenin has not been mentioned?