Brown dwarf research is a subfield of astrophysics focused on objects with masses between the heaviest gas giant planets and the lightest stars, insufficient to sustain stable hydrogen fusion. This research area investigates their formation pathways, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, internal structure, cooling and evolutionary tracks, and spectral classification (e.g., L, T, and Y types). It leverages multiwavelength observations, high-resolution spectroscopy, and theoretical modeling to constrain substellar mass functions, metallicities, cloud physics, and magnetic activity, and to calibrate brown dwarfs as analogs for exoplanet atmospheres and as benchmarks for testing low-temperature equation-of-state and radiative-transfer models.
An international team of astronomers reports the detection of two new brown dwarfs orbiting distant stars using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The newfound objects are about 30 times more massive than ...
The Flame Nebula, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the Flame Nebula, there are objects so small that their cores will never be able to fuse ...
Astronomy
Mar 10, 2025
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Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has explored the atmosphere of a nearby brown dwarf binary designated WISE J045853.90+643451.9. As a result, they detected hydrogen cyanide ...
Using the Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC), astronomers have performed high-resolution spectroscopic observations of a brown dwarf known as HD 206893 B. Results of the observational campaign, presented Jan. 23 ...
Astronomers from the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) in Australia and elsewhere have reinvestigated a planetary system known as HD 28185, known to contain a gaseous giant exoplanet and an outer companion, believed ...
Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy roughly 200,000 light-years from Earth, lies the young star cluster NGC 602. The local environment of this cluster is a close analog of what existed in ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2024
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105
Hundreds of papers have been written about the first known brown dwarf, Gliese 229B, since its discovery by Caltech researchers at the Institute's Palomar Observatory in 1995. But a pressing mystery has persisted about this ...
Astronomy
Oct 16, 2024
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