Two new stars have been discovered which are said to be the closets star system found in the century.

A pair of stars that is the third-closest star system to the Sun was discovered by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds. According to a report by Science Daily, this is the closest star system discovered since 1916.

Both the stars are "brown dwarfs." Brown dwarfs are stars that that are too small in mass to ever become hot enough to ignite hydrogen fusion. Due to this they are very dim and cool.

"The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years -- so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there," Luhman said. "It will be an excellent hunting ground for planets because it is very close to Earth, which makes it a lot easier to see any planets orbiting either of the brown dwarfs."

Due to its short distance from the sun, Luhman predicts that it make become a destination for manned expeditions outside our solar system in the future. Since the stars were discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite, the system has been named WISE J104915.57-531906.

"It is only a short distance away from the second closest star named "Barnard's Star" which was discovered in 1916 and found to be 6 light years away from the Sun. The closest star system to the sun contains "Alpha Centauri" and was discovered in 1839 and is said to be only 4.4 light years away from. It also is home to fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1915 at 4.2 light years away.