ν Ophiuchi tagged posts

Are Brown Dwarfs Failed Stars or Super-planets?

Artist rendering of a brown dwarf. They are more massive and hotter than planets but lack the nuclear fusion in their core as in normal stars. Two such “failed” stars were detected orbiting the star ? Ophiuchi. They were probably formed in the earlier protoplanetary disk of the star.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers find first signs they can also form like a planet. Brown dwarfs fill the “gap” between stars and the much smaller planets – two very different types of astronomical objects. But how they originate has yet to be fully explained. Astronomers from Heidelberg University may now be able to answer that question...

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