LP 944-20

Coordinates: 03^h 39^m 35.22^s, −35° 25′ 44.09″

LP 944-20 is a dim brown dwarf of spectral class M9 located about 21 light-years from the Solar System in the constellation of Fornax. With a visual apparent magnitude of 18, it has one of the dimmest visual magnitudes listed on the RECONS page.

On 15 December 1999 an X-ray flare was detected. On 27 July 2000, radio emission (in flare and quiescence) was detected from this brown dwarf by a team of students at the Very Large Array, reported in the 15 March 2001 issue of the journal Nature.

The first parallax measurement from 1996 found that LP 944-20 (designated there as BRI 0337−3535) has a relative parallax of ${\displaystyle \pi _{r}=200.0\pm 4.2}$ mas, and its correction from relative to absolute parallax (i.e. mean parallax of the reference frame stars) is ${\displaystyle \pi _{ref}=1.4\pm 0.3}$ mas. This yields an absolute parallax of ${\displaystyle \pi _{r}+\pi _{ref}=200.0+1.4=201.4}$ mas, with a standard deviation (according to ${\displaystyle \sigma _{X+Y}^{2}=\sigma _{X}^{2}+\sigma _{Y}^{2}}$) of ${\displaystyle {\sqrt {\sigma _{\pi _{r}}^{2}+\sigma _{\pi _{ref}}^{2}}}={\sqrt {4.2^{2}+0.3^{2}}}=4.21}$ mas, which corresponds to a distance of 7000500000000000000♠5±0.1 pc, or 7001162000000000000♠16.2±0.3 ly. (The same values of absolute parallax and its standard deviation are in the RECONS' TOP100 list.