- Scientists thought they had found a new, distant brown dwarf.
- The discovery was made using data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
- The new brown dwarf is about 30 times larger than Jupiter.
James Webb discovers a new brown dwarf. An international team of astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new, faint, distant, cold brown dwarf. It turns out that the recently discovered object, called GLASS-JWST-BD1, is about 31 times the mass of Jupiter.
The discovery is described in a paper published on arXiv.org on July 29.
Between planets and stars, brown dwarfs are intermediate objects. Most astronomers agree that they are quasi-stellar objects with masses ranging from 13 to 80 Jupiter masses. Also dwarfs “T” is a subtype of brown dwarfs with effective temperatures between 500 and 1500 Kelvin.
Moreover, astronomers’ understanding of objects near the controversial planet/star boundaries is improving. Also, including massive exoplanets, through the study of T dwarfs. Although there have been several discoveries of brown dwarfs so far, there have only been 400 discoveries of T dwarfs so far.
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In light of this, the newly discovered brown dwarf, which most likely belongs to the T dwarf subclass, according to a team of astronomers led by Mario Nonino from the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste in Italy.
The discovery is part of the James Webb Space Telescope’s “Looking Through the Glass” early deployment program. Which used near-infrared spectroscopy, near-infrared imaging, and non-slit spectrographs to study the large galaxy cluster.
“We present the serendipitous discovery of a late T-type brown dwarf in the James Webb Parallel Field Telescope camera observations of Abell 2744 from early publication.
The discovery was enabled by the high sensitivity of the James Webb Telescope’s sensors at 4 µm wavelengths and the 0.9–4.5 µm panchromatic coverage of spectral power distribution,”
The researchers in the paper
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James Webb discovers a brown dwarf about 30 times larger than Jupiter
The study estimates that GLASS-JWST-BD1 has an effective temperature of about 330 degrees Celsius and a mass of about 31.43 Jupiter masses. This brown dwarf is believed to be 5 billion years old.
GLASS-JWST-BD1 may be a late T-type dwarf, according to comparisons with theoretical models. Its distance was measured in a direction perpendicular to the galactic plane, and it was found to be between 1,850 and 2,350 light-years away. The results suggest that this object may be a thick disk or halo object in a galactic community.
Scientists added that it is necessary to conduct further studies on “GLASS-JWST-BD1” to confirm that it is a “T”-shaped dwarf. To learn more about the traits of this organism, kinetic or chemical abundance data in particular are needed.
The paper’s authors highlighted how this discovery demonstrates the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope to study stellar objects and objects beneath distant, low-mass stars in their concluding remarks.
“GLASS-JWST-BD1’s large estimated distance confirms the ability of the James Webb Space Telescope to probe the very low-mass end of the stellar and quasellar mass function in the thick disk and galactic halo, enabling exploration of the metallicity dependence of low-mass star formation and the evolution of the dwarf’s atmosphere. Brown,” the scientists wrote.
You can view the full study yourself at arXiv.org.
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Study summary:
“We present the serendipitous discovery of a late T-type brown dwarf in the NERCAM observations of the James Webb Space Telescope Parallel Field Abell 2744 for early release. The discovery was enabled by James Webb’s sensitivity. At 4 µm wavelengths and the panchromatic 0.9–4.5 µm coverage of the spectral energy distribution. The unresolved point source has magnitudes F115W = 27.95 ± 0.15 and F444W = 25.84 ± 0.01 (AB). Its colors, F115W − F444W and F356W − F444W, match the colors expected for other known T dwarfs.
We can rule it out as a red-background star, a high-redshift quasar, or a very high-redshift galaxy. Comparison with stellar atmospheric models indicates a temperature Teff ≈ 600 ~ K and surface gravity log ≈ 5, implying a mass of 0.03 ~ M⊙ and an age of 5 ~ Gyr. We estimate the distance of this candidate to be ~570–720 pc in a direction perpendicular to the galactic plane. making it likely a thick disk or halo brown dwarf. “These observations confirm the ability of the James Webb Space Telescope to investigate the very low-mass end of sub-mass function in the halo and the thick disk of the galaxy.”
