Runaway 'failed star' races through the cosmos at 1.2 million mph

A newly discovered rogue stellar body may well be a "failed star," but it certainly isn't a failure when it comes to velocity! 

The potential brown dwarf is racing through our Milky Way galaxy at 1.2 million mph (1.9 million kph). That's about 1,500 times faster than the speed of sound! Thankfully, this cosmic runaway is heading toward the center of the Milky Way and not toward us. However, the object is Traveling so fast that it could eventually escape our galaxy entirely. 

The incredible speed of this newly uncovered stellar body, designated CWISE J1249+3621, isn't the only fascinating thing about the object, which is currently around 400 light-years from Earth.  

The stellar body has a mass that is just around 8% that of the sun, or 80 times the mass of Jupiter, which puts it right on the dividing line between a star and a fascinating group of objects called "brown dwarfs," often (somewhat unfairly) labeled "failed stars."

CWISE J1249+3621,was originally discovered by citizen scientists working with the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project, which uses data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to detect faint, moving objects relatively close to the sun.

Related: Why do some stars fail to ignite?

After several citizen scientists flagged the object, a team of astronomers followed up using the Keck I Telescope, one of two 10-meter twin telescopes located on the dormant volcano Maunakea, in Hawai'i.