Artist’s conception of a different brown dwarf to the one studied by Jonathan Gagné and his team. The brown dwarf depicted here is also part of a moving group, although a different one than AB Doradus. Credit: NASA/JPL, slightly modified by Jonathan Gagné
Astronomers measure temperature at which brown dwarfs go from cloudy to cloudless. Brown dwarfs, the larger cousins of giant planets, undergo atmospheric changes from cloudy to cloudless as they age and cool. A team of astronomers measured for the first time the temperature at which this shift happens in young brown dwarfs. Their findings may help them better understand how gas giant planets like our own Solar System’s Jupiter evolved.
Brown dwarfs are too small to sustain the hydrogen fusion process that fuels stars and allows them to ...
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