brown dwarf – Astronomy Now

White dwarf chows down on brown dwarf companion in feeding frenzy

26 January 2020 Astronomy Now

A chance observation buried in the Kepler Space Telescope’s data archive revealed a dwarf nova that brightened by a factor of 1,600 in a single day.

Brown dwarf or massive exoplanet detected with powerful magnetic field

4 August 2018 Astronomy Now

The Very Large Array radio telescope has made the first detection of a planetary-mass body with a magnetic field 200 times more powerful than Jupiter’s. But it’s not yet clear whether it’s a brown dwarf or a massive exoplanet.

Microlensing observations with space telescope duo reveals brown dwarf

12 November 2016 Astronomy Now

In a first-of-its-kind collaboration, NASA’s Spitzer and Swift space telescopes joined forces to observe a microlensing event, when a distant star brightens due to the gravitational field of at least one foreground cosmic object. This technique is useful for finding low-mass bodies orbiting stars, such as planets. In this case, the observations revealed a brown dwarf.

Evidence of water clouds found in spectrum of coldest brown dwarf

7 July 2016 Astronomy Now

Since its detection in 2014, the brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 has fascinated astronomers. Only 7.2 light-years from Earth, it is the coldest known object outside of our solar system. Now, a team led by astronomers has succeeded in obtaining strong evidence for the existence of clouds of water or water ice — the first such clouds detected outside our solar system.

Lone planetary-mass object found in a young star family

20 April 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found a free-floating object called WISEA 1147, thought to be an exceptionally low-mass “brown dwarf,” which is a star that lacked enough mass to burn nuclear fuel and glow like a star. Reasearchers using data from NASA’s WISE and 2MASS sky surveys found the object in TW Hydrae — a young, 10-million-year-old association of stars.

Hubble directly measures rotation of cloudy ‘super-Jupiter’ exoplanet

19 February 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of an extreme exoplanet by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere. The planet, called 2M1207b, is about four times more massive than Jupiter and is dubbed a “super-Jupiter.” This is the first measurement of the rotation of a massive exoplanet using direct imaging.

Searching for orphan stars amid starbirth fireworks in Orion

29 September 2015 Astronomy Now

A new Gemini Observatory image reveals the remarkable “fireworks” that accompany the birth of stars. The picture captures in unprecedented clarity the fascinating structures of a gas jet complex emanating from a stellar nursery at supersonic speeds. Researchers believe they have also found a collection of runaway (orphan) stars that result from all this activity.