go to homepage
Contributor Avatar
Gibor Basri
Primary Contributions (1)
The brown dwarf 2MASSWJ 1207334−393254 (centre) as seen in a photo taken by the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory, Cerro Paranal, Chile. The brown dwarf has a mass 25 times that of Jupiter and a surface temperature of 2,400 K. Orbiting the brown dwarf at a distance of 8.3 billion km (5.2 billion miles) is a planet (lower left) that has a mass five times that of Jupiter and a surface temperature of 1,250 K.
astronomical object that is intermediate between a planet and a star. Brown dwarfs usually have a mass less than 0.075 that of the Sun, or roughly 75 times that of Jupiter. (This maximum mass is a little higher for objects with fewer heavy elements than the Sun.)  Many astronomers draw the line between brown dwarfs and planets at the lower fusion boundary of about 13 Jupiter masses. The difference between brown dwarfs and stars is that, unlike stars, brown dwarfs do not reach stable luminosities by thermonuclear fusion of normal hydrogen. Both stars and brown dwarfs produce energy by fusion of deuterium (a rare isotope of hydrogen) in their first few million years. The cores of stars then continue to contract and get hotter until they fuse hydrogen. However, brown dwarfs prevent further contraction because their cores are dense enough to hold themselves up with electron degeneracy pressure. (Those brown dwarfs above 60 Jupiter masses begin to fuse hydrogen, but they then stabilize,...
Email this page