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    brown dwarf tagged posts

    Astronomers find evidence of Water Clouds in 1st Spectrum of Coldest Brown Dwarf

    July 7, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist's rendering of WISE 0855 as it might appear if viewed up close in infrared light. (Illustration by Joy Pollard, Gemini Observatory/AURA)

    Artist’s rendering of WISE 0855 as it might appear if viewed up close in infrared light. (Illustration by Joy Pollard, Gemini Observatory/AURA)

    Difficult spectroscopic observations reveal properties of the coldest known object outside of our solar system. 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 and is just barely visible at infrared wavelengths with the largest ground-based telescopes.

    Now, a team has succeeded in obtaining an infrared spectrum of WISE 0855 using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, providing the first details of the object’s composition and chemistry...

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    Stellar Cannibalism Transforms Star into Brown Dwarf

    May 19, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    White dwarf (right) stripping mass from the brown dwarf. Credit: Rene Breton, University of Manchester.

    White dwarf (right) stripping mass from the brown dwarf. Credit: Rene Breton, University of Manchester.

    Astronomers have detected a sub-stellar object that used to be a star, after being consumed by its white dwarf companion. An international team of astronomers made the discovery by observing a very faint binary system, J1433 730 light-years away. The system consists of a low-mass object – 60X the mass of Jupiter – in an extremely tight 78-min orbit around a white dwarf (the remnant of a star like our Sun).

    Due to their close proximity, the white dwarf strips mass from its low-mass companion. This process has removed about 90% of the mass of the companion, turning it from a star into a brown dwarf...

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    Rotation of Cloudy ‘Super-Jupiter’ directly measured

    February 19, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This is an illustration of a planet that is four times the mass of Jupiter and orbits 5 billion miles from a brown-dwarf companion (the bright red object seen in the background). The rotation rate of this "super-Jupiter" has been measured by studying subtle variations in the infrared light the hot planet radiates through a variegated, cloudy atmosphere. The planet completes one rotation every 10 hours -- about the same rate as Jupiter. Because the planet is young, it is still contracting under gravity and radiating heat. The atmosphere is so hot that it rains molten glass and, at lower altitudes, molten iron. Because the planet is only 170 light-years away, many of the bright background stars that can be seen from Earth can be seen from the planet's location in our galaxy, including Sirius, Fomalhaut, and Alpha Centauri. Our sun is a faint star in the background, located midway between Procyon and Altair. Credit: Artwork: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI); Science: NASA, ESA, Y. Zhou and D. Apai (U. Arizona)

    This is an illustration of a planet that is four times the mass of Jupiter and orbits 5 billion miles from a brown-dwarf companion (the bright red object seen in the background). The rotation rate of this “super-Jupiter” has been measured by studying subtle variations in the infrared light the hot planet radiates through a variegated, cloudy atmosphere. The planet completes one rotation every 10 hours — about the same rate as Jupiter. Because the planet is young, it is still contracting under gravity and radiating heat. The atmosphere is so hot that it rains molten glass and, at lower altitudes, molten iron...

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    Report of Discovery of Large Object in Far Outer Edges of Solar System incites Skeptical Reactions

    December 13, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    ALMA

    ALMA prototype-antennas at the ALMA test facility. Credit: ESO

    2 separate teams of researchers (one from Mexico, the other Sweden), have incited skepticism among the astronomy community by posting papers on the preprint server arXiv each describing a different large object they observed in the outer edges of the solar system. Both teams made their observations after reviewing data from ALMA—a cluster of radio dishes in the Chilean mountains.

    Could There Be Massive Planets in the Far Reaches of Our Solar System?

    The two ALMA detections on March 20 and April 14, 2014. (Credit: V. H. T. Vlemmings et al., 2015)

    One of the objects was found to be near W Aquilae in the night sky—the other adjacent to Alpha Centauri ...

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