The James Webb Space Telescope has detected the least massive brown dwarfs known to date—some of them have a mass only about twice that of Jupiter. The discovery was made while studying the star-forming region IC 348, located approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth, the European Space Agency (ESA) reports, writes UNN.
Details
IC 348 is located in the constellation Perseus and is one of the closest regions of active star formation to Earth. Astronomers used Webb's capabilities to determine how small objects formed during the star-formation process can be.
Brown dwarfs form as a result of the collapse of gas clouds, just like ordinary stars. However, their mass is insufficient for hydrogen to be stably converted into helium in their cores.
The discovery surprised astronomers
In 2022, Webb had already found brown dwarfs in IC 348 with masses of approximately 3–4 Jupiters. New, deeper observations made it possible to detect objects with masses of only about 2 Jupiters, or approximately 0.19% of the Sun's mass.
According to ESA, these are the least massive brown dwarfs known. Their existence raises new questions for modern models of star formation, since objects this light were nevertheless able to form through a "stellar" process.
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Astronomers discovered another surprise near one of the new brown dwarfs. It has signs of a disk of material around it, in which planets could potentially form, even though the mass of the brown dwarf itself is comparable to the masses of planets.
Researchers also detected unusual signs of hydrocarbons in the atmospheres of the smallest brown dwarfs. Scientists suggest that such extremely low-mass objects may even belong to a separate spectral class.
Along with the study's findings, ESA released a large-scale image of IC 348 taken by the telescope's NIRCam camera. It shows young stars, brown dwarfs, protostars, and jets of material expelled by newborn stars into the surrounding gas and dust.
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