NASA’s Spitzer telescope observes youngest brown dwarf ever observed

Washington, November 24: NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed, a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an astronomical mystery about how these cosmic misfits are formed.

Brown dwarfs are misfits because they fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass.

They are cooler and more lightweight than stars and more massive (and normally warmer) than planets.

Brown dwarfs are born of the same dense, dusty clouds that spawn stars and planets.

But while they may share the same galactic nursery, brown dwarfs are often called “failed” stars because they lack the mass of their hotter, brighter stellar siblings.

Without that mass, the gas at their core does not get hot enough to trigger the nuclear fusion that burns hydrogen - the main component of these molecular clouds – into helium.

Source:http://www.zopag.com/news/nasas-spitzer-telescope-observes-youngest-brown-dwarf-ever-observed/10301.html