A team of astronomers have used James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to map the weather on a pair of brown dwarfs. Infrared light was analysed from the pair and its variation over time was measured.
- The team were able to generate a 3D picture of the weather and discovered gasses in the atmosphere like water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide.
Brown dwarfs
- Brown dwarfs are neither a star nor a planet, but something in between. They give off their own light thanks to their sheer heat.
- Brown dwarfs are objects which have a size between that of a giant planet like Jupiter and that of a small star.
- In fact, most astronomers would classify any object with between 15 times the mass of Jupiter and 75 times the mass of Jupiter to be a brown dwarf.
- They lack sufficient mass for sustained hydrogen fusion in the core but emit infrared radiation due to residual heat and fusion of deuterium and lithium.
- Many scientists have dubbed brown dwarfs as “failed stars”.
- All of the brown dwarfs discovered so far are parts of a binary system. A binary system is one in which two stars orbit around one another.
Planets and stars
- Planets shine by reflected light; stars shine by producing their own light.
- As a star forms from a cloud of contracting gas, the temperature in its center becomes so large that hydrogen begins to fuse into helium — releasing an enormous amount of energy which causes the star to begin shining under its own power.
- A planet forms from small particles of dust left over from the formation of a star. These particles collide and stick together. There is never enough temperature to cause particles to fuse and release energy.
