The James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> appears to have discovered an object weighing ‘only’ 3-4 times the mass of Jupiter: a new record holder for the smallest brown dwarf discovered, if confirmed.<\/p> A team of astronomers used Webb to search for the smallest brown dwarf: the smallest object that can form in a star-like manner.<\/p> Lead author Kevin Luhman of Pennsylvania State University and his colleague, Catarina Alves de Oliveira of the European Space Agency, used Webb to study star cluster<\/a> IC 348, which is located 1,000 lightyears from Earth.<\/p> This cluster can be found in the Perseus star-forming region and is relatively young at just 5 million years old.<\/p> Because of just how young the stars in the cluster are, any brown dwarfs should still retain a vibrant, youthful glow in infrared<\/a> light, which the Webb Telescope is designed to observe.<\/p> “One basic question you\u2019ll find in every astronomy textbook is, what are the smallest stars? That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to answer,” says Luhman.<\/p> The team imaged the centre of IC 348 using the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera<\/a>) instrument to identify brown dwarf candidates.<\/p> They then used the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph<\/a>) instrument to follow up the most promising leads.<\/p> They settled on 3 promising targets of 3-8 Jupiter masses, with surface temperatures ranging 830-1500\u00b0C.<\/p> The smallest of these weighs just 3-4 Jupiters, pushing the limits of what astronomers know about how brown dwarfs form.<\/p> Such a small cloud of cosmic gas would have much weaker gravity, making it much more difficult to form a brown dwarf in the first place.<\/p> “It\u2019s pretty easy for current models to make giant planets in a disc around a star,” says Alves de Oliveira, who is principal investigator on the observing program.<\/p> “But in this cluster, it would be unlikely that this object formed in a disc, instead forming like a star, and three Jupiter masses is 300 times smaller than our Sun.<\/p> “So we have to ask, how does the star formation process operate at such very, very small masses?”<\/p> A further discovery was made during Webb’s observations of this object, and that’s the spectral signature of an an unidentified hydrocarbon, a molecule containing both hydrogen and carbon atoms.<\/p>![\"The](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2023\/12\/Star-Cluster-IC-348.jpg\")
How the discovery was made<\/strong><\/h2>
![\"Star](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2023\/12\/weic2331b.jpg\")
Studying the brown dwarf’s atmosphere<\/strong><\/h2>