Gemini North observations help identify rotational speed limit for brown dwarfs
Three brown dwarfs, often called failed stars, are spinning faster than any others.
April 19, 2021
Astronomers have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. The rate is so extreme that if they rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing apart.
Brown dwarfs are, simply put, failed stars. They form like stars but are less massive and more like giant planets.
Astronomers first measured the rotation speeds of these brown dwarfs using the Spitzer Space Telescope and confirmed them with follow-up observations with the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawaii and the Magellan Baade telescope in Chile. Gemini North is one of the pair of telescopes that make up the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF s NOIRLab.
Chile
Mauna-kea
Hawaii
United-states
Sandy-leggett
Stanimir-metchev
Megan-tannock
Research-news
Division-of-astronomical-sciences-nsfpublic-affairs
Us-national-science-foundation
Spitzer-space-telescope
Gemini-north
Image: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva
New research documents the fastest-spinning brown dwarfs on record. The objects are rotating so rapidly that, should they rotate any faster, they’d likely tear themselves apart. The finding could mean that these so-called “failed stars” have a built-in speed limit.
Advertisement
The three brown dwarfs are spinning 10 times faster than Jupiter, completing a single rotation around their axes once every hour. That’s about 30% faster than the fastest spinning brown dwarfs on record, according to the new paper, which is set to appear in an upcoming issue of the Astronomical Journal (a preprint is currently available at the arXiv).
Chile
Canada
Mauna-kea
Hawaii
United-states
London
City-of
United-kingdom
Sandy-leggett
Megan-tannock
Carnegie-institution-for-science-magellan-baade
Astronomical-journal
VIDEO: CosmoView Episode 25: Caught Speeding: Clocking the Fastest-Spinning Brown Dwarfs view more
Credit: Images and Videos: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva, P. Marenfeld, NASA/JPL-Caltech, R. Hurt (IPAC).
Music: zero-project - The Lower Dungeons (zero-project.gr).
Astronomers at Western University have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs known. They found three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. That rate is so extreme that if these failed stars rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing themselves apart. Identified by NASA s Spitzer Space Telescope, the brown dwarfs were then studied by ground-based telescopes including Gemini North, which confirmed their surprisingly speedy rotation.
Arizona
United-states
University-of-arizona
Mauna-kea
Hawaii
Ames-research-center
California
Western-university
Kitt-peak-national-observatory
Chile
San-diego
Canada