Astronomers have discovered a fascinating new object orbiting a small red star not far from Earth — a brown dwarf with powerful storms and cloudy weather patterns.
The discovery, made with the help of the W. M. Keck Observatory, the Subaru Telescope in Hawaiʻi, and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, is giving scientists valuable clues about how stars and planets form and evolve.
The system lies about 55 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Boötes.
The host star, called J1446, is a red dwarf — a small, cool type of star that makes up more than half of all stars in our galaxy.
Its newly found companion, named J1446B, is a brown dwarf — an object too massive to be a planet but not quite heavy enough to become a full-fledged star.
With about 60 times the mass of Jupiter, it orbits its star at a distance 4.3 times the Earth–Sun distance and takes roughly 20 years to complete one orbit.
What makes J1446B especially intriguing is its changing brightness. Near-infrared observations revealed variations of around 30%, which scientists believe are caused by clouds or giant storms moving through its thick atmosphere.
“Studying the weather on these distant objects helps us understand how their atmospheres form, and it also gives us insight into the conditions on planets beyond our solar system,” said Taichi Uyama from Japan’s Astrobiology Center, who led the study.
For years, astronomers believed most red dwarfs were single stars. But with improved instruments and techniques, that view is changing.
New data show that low-mass companions like brown dwarfs are more common than once thought.
Understanding how often they occur — and how their masses compare to planets and stars — is crucial for figuring out where the line between planet formation and star formation truly lies.
To make this discovery, the team used three powerful observational tools. The Subaru Telescope’s InfraRed Doppler instrument detected tiny wobbles in the host star’s motion caused by the brown dwarf’s gravity.
Keck Observatory’s high-resolution infrared camera captured direct images of the brown dwarf, confirming its presence and allowing scientists to measure its orbit and temperature. Meanwhile, Gaia’s precise measurements of the star’s position added another layer of data to calculate the system’s dynamics with great accuracy.
According to co-author Charles Beichman from Caltech, Keck’s images even showed brightness changes that hint at “clouds and weather patterns” on J1446B. Future instruments, such as Keck’s upcoming HISPEC spectrograph, will let astronomers study these alien weather systems in even greater detail.
The findings, published in The Astronomical Journal, mark an exciting step toward understanding how complex objects — from brown dwarfs to gas giants like Jupiter — take shape across the galaxy.
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