brown dwarfs – Astronomy Now

A deep infrared view of the Orion Nebula from the Very Large Telescope

24 March 2019 Astronomy Now

A deep infrared view of the Orion Nebula reveals an abundance of faint brown dwarfs and an unexpected number of planetary-mass objects, key elements in studies of star formation and the environments that produce them.

Astrophysicist proposes new definition of a planet

22 January 2018 Astronomy Now

Pluto hogs the spotlight in the continuing scientific debate over what is and what is not a planet, but a less conspicuous argument rages on about the planetary status of massive objects outside our solar system. The dispute is not just about semantics, as it is closely related to how giant planets like Jupiter form.

Hubble finds substellar objects in the Orion Nebula

16 January 2018 Astronomy Now

In an unprecedented deep survey for small, faint objects in the Orion Nebula, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered the largest known population of brown dwarfs sprinkled among newborn stars.

Scientists improve brown dwarf weather forecasts

17 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Dim objects called brown dwarfs, less massive than the Sun but more massive than Jupiter, have powerful winds and clouds — specifically, hot patchy clouds made of iron droplets and silicate dust. Scientists recently realised these giant clouds can move and thicken or thin surprisingly rapidly, in less than an Earth day, but did not understand why.

Hubble applauds waltzing dwarfs

11 June 2017 Astronomy Now

Italian astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have tracked the rhythmic movement of two brown dwarf stars across the sky.

Surprise! When a brown dwarf is actually a planetary mass object

9 May 2017 Astronomy Now

Sometimes a brown dwarf is actually a planet — or planet-like anyway. A team of scientists in the United States and Canada have discovered that what astronomers had previously thought was one of the closest brown dwarfs to our own Sun is in fact a planetary mass object.

Brown dwarfs hiding in plain sight in our solar neighbourhood

7 September 2016 Astronomy Now

Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars as they are too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that powers stars. Their temperatures can range from nearly as hot as a star to as cool as a planet and their masses also range between star-like and giant-planet-like. A near-infrared survey has discovered several ultracool brown dwarfs in the Sun’s vicinity.

Deepest ever look into the Orion Nebula reveals hordes of low-mass objects

12 July 2016 Astronomy Now

The European Southern Observatory’s HAWK-I infrared instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile has been used to peer deeper into the heart of Orion Nebula than ever before. The spectacular picture reveals about ten times as many brown dwarfs and isolated planetary-mass objects than were previously known.

Astronomers find giant planet around very young star CI Tauri

27 May 2016 Astronomy Now

Contradicting the long-standing idea that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form, astronomers have just announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a 2 million-year-old star that still retains a disc of circumstellar gas and dust. CI Tau b is at least eight times larger than Jupiter and 450 light-years from Earth.

Where are the missing brown dwarfs?

9 April 2016 Astronomy Now

Brown dwarfs are objects that are too large to be called planets, yet too small to shine by nuclear fusion. Two German researchers have taken a careful look at the distribution of nearby examples of these “failed stars” and to their surprise discovered a significant asymmetry in their spatial arrangement.