Technique that revealed failed star’s weather could do the same for exoplanets
I. Crossfield/European Southern Observatory
One of the first maps of clouds on an object outside the solar system appears in the Jan. 30 Nature.
The clouds surround Luhman 16B, a brown dwarf just 6.5 light-years away in the constellation Vela. Brown dwarfs are gaseous objects larger than planets but too small to fuse hydrogen as true stars do. Previous studies hinted that brown dwarfs’ ultrahot atmospheres contain clouds of molten iron and silicates.
To see Luhman 16B’s clouds, a team led by Ian Crossfield of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, used the Very Large Telescope in Chile.
The researchers gathered infrared light as Luhman 16B rotated on its axis. Darker areas indicated higher, colder clouds (but still hot enough to melt iron) and lighter patches indicated either lower, hotter clouds or hydrogen gas on the dwarf’s surface, visible through gaps in the upper layer.