Astronomers have discovered nine new brown dwarfs, often called "failed stars," including the two smallest examples of their kind ever identified. This breakthrough was made using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The study, led by Kevin Luhman from Pennsylvania State University, was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The brown dwarfs are located in the star cluster IC 348 within the Perseus Molecular Cloud, about a thousand light-years from Earth.
Brown dwarfs are celestial objects that form like stars but lack the mass to initiate hydrogen fusion, the process that makes stars shine. Two of the newly discovered brown dwarfs have only about twice the mass of Jupiter, representing about 0.2% of the Sun's mass.
One of these brown dwarfs also has a surrounding disk of gas and dust, similar to those that form planets. Scientists also found a mysterious hydrocarbon compound in their atmospheres, which has not been previously identified. This discovery is expected to change the understanding of the boundaries between planets and stars.