Figure 1 shows the makeup of a typical slice of the Milky Way - specifically the sample of
nearby stars within 8 pc of the Sun and visible from the northern hemisphere - with stars on the left and brown dwarfs on the right. The
stars are composed of 4 blue A stars, 1 green-tinted F star, 5 yellow G stars (one of which is the Sun itself), 22 orange K stars, 87 red
M stars, and 9 small white dwarfs. The brown dwarfs on the right are composed of a few red M and redder L dwarfs along with lots of
magenta T dwarfs (or cooler objects), most of which are so cool that even the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) cannot detect them. Despite the fact that there are at
least as many brown dwarfs as stars, the stars are responsible for most of the mass, as the scale shows.
