hot patchy clouds made of iron droplets and silicate dust tagged posts

By using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have found that the varying glow of brown dwarfs over time can be explained by bands of patchy clouds rotating at different speeds. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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 realized these giant clouds can move and thicken or thin surprisingly rapidly, in less than an Earth day, but did not understand why.

Now, researchers have a new model for explaining how clouds move and change shape in brown dwarfs, using insights from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope...