What is the weather we have today, a dwarf? - BBC

European astronomers worked by forecasters. They first saw the changes in the weather on brown dwarf – not the star, not the giant planet.

Astronomers were able to create a map for the first time weather on brown dwarf – a representative of one of the most rare and unusual types of objects in the universe. Brown dwarfs, which are commonly referred to as failed stars, fill a gap in the classification of objects between stars and gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

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Their masses

enough thanks to the compression in the bowels of a high temperature,

but not enough to run this temperature could thermonuclear reactions occurring in normal stars.

For this reason, brown dwarfs do not shine in the optical range and can only be detected by its infrared (heat) radiation. For the same reason science knows quite a bit of brown dwarfs: the first such object was detected only twenty years ago, and today astronomers have counted them only a few hundred.

Luhmann (Luhman) 16 – double star consisting of a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting a common center of mass. It was opened as recently as 2013, the American astronomer Kevin Luhmann on pictures sent Infrared Space Observatory WISE. In accordance with the rules of the names of binary stars brighter component called Luhman 16A, and its companion – 16B.

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beauty of this pair is that it is located at a distance of only six light years from the Sun, and therefore is the third distance from us after the star system Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star.

Until recently, scientists managed to see on some brown dwarfs only signs of heterogeneity, but it is not allowed to judge the temperature distribution and the “clouds” on them.

Astronomers led by Ayana Krossfilda of the Astronomical Institute of the Max Planck could not just take a picture of a dwarf Luhman 16B, but also to see its features.

«Previous observations have shown that brown dwarfs may have spotted surface, but now we really managed to map them. Soon we will be able to see how on this brown dwarf formed, evolve and dissipate clouds, and eventually something will ekzometeorologi predict the weather for those who gather to visit Luhman 16B », – joked author of the discovery, published in the journal Nature .

To see especially the “surface” of a dwarf and a region of enhanced cloud, astronomers studied it with the echelle spectrograph CRIRES, mounted on the telescope VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile.

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This allowed not only to see how the brightness changes dwarf as it rotates, but also to learn,

what dark and bright areas of the surface at the time of observation are moving away from the observer, or to him.

With this information and knowing the speed of rotation of the dwarf, the scientists were able to create a map of the movement of its atmosphere. “Long-term monitoring of the dwarf pointed to the fact that weather conditions are changing rapidly, but remain at least partially similar from one night to another. This suggests that the time evolution of global weather patterns – the order of the day “- the scientists write in their article.

atmospheres of brown dwarfs should remind the properties of the atmosphere of hot gas giant planets. Therefore, by studying the atmosphere of brown dwarfs, astronomers can understand the laws of motion of the planets atmospheres young, the massive opening of which they hope in the near future.

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