The James Webb Space Telescope is making it possible to detect more celestial objects that were previously undetectable, including objects that can further our knowledge of how the universe began. For example, a team of astronomers has detected for the first time a “rich population of brown dwarf candidates” outside our galaxy. The image above was taken using the telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.
We already know that there are around 3,000 brown dwarfs in the Milky Way, but thanks to Webb, it’s now possible to find a brown dwarf candidate located 200,000 light-years from Earth. Peter Zeidler, team leader at European Space Agency AURA/STScI, said: “It is only through this incredible sensitivity and spatial resolution in the right wavelength range that we can detect objects at such great distances.” Ta. “It has never been possible and will remain impossible from the ground for the foreseeable future.”
Brown dwarfs are neither planets nor stars. These are floating objects that are about 13 to 75 times larger than Jupiter and are not gravitationally bound to their star like exoplanets. True, they are larger than the largest gas giants, but they are not large enough to produce large amounts of light, which is why they are sometimes called “failed stars.” Scientists behind the study say their observations support the theory that brown dwarfs form in a similar way to stars, and simply “haven’t accumulated enough mass to become full-fledged stars.” As NASA points out, scientists believe that “the majority” of the mass in the universe may exist in the form of brown dwarfs. Because they are mostly dark and produce little light, they could help solve the “mass deficit” problem that astronomers are still trying to solve.
Researchers have discovered a new brown dwarf candidate in a star cluster called NGC 602 near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy. They explained that older Hubble observations had shown that the cluster contained very young, low-mass stars, but thanks to Webb they were now able to observe them more closely. Based on what they observed, the cluster exists in an environment comparable to the early Universe, which is a sign that studying brown dwarfs can help explain how stars and planets formed billions of years ago. This means that we may be able to obtain further clues to find out what happened.
