This Nearby Brown Dwarf May Have Auroras–And a Moon, Too
Earlier this month, at the latest annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS)—the largest organization of professional astronomers in the country—many cosmic objects got their moment to shine.In the case of brown dwarfs, though, that shine is pretty feeble.Brown dwarfs exist in a kind of netherworld category between planets and stars. They’re massive enough that the pressure in their core is sufficient to fuse deuterium—an isotope of hydrogen—but not massive enough to fuse normal hydrogen, the…