A research team has identified brown dwarfs orbiting close to bright stars, an observation made possible by the Gaia satellite and the Very Large Telescope’s GRAVITY instrument. These findings, revealing brown dwarfs in orbits similar to Earth’s distance from the sun, provide new insights into their formation and the dynamics of celestial bodies.
Those identified in this study orbit their stars at distances equivalent to that between our planet and the sun. Such short distances raise questions about the brown dwarfs’ formation. Furthermore, certain fluxes observed are weaker than predicted by scientific models. This could mean some of the brown dwarfs belong to binary systems—that is, they may themselves be orbited by smaller companions.
Luminosity and mass are two key indicators for understanding how a celestial object cooled over time, and thus retrace the history of its formation. Reference: “Combining Gaia and GRAVITY: Characterising five new directly detected substellar companions” by T.O. Winterhalder, S. Lacour, A. Merand, J. Kammerer, A.-L. Maire, T. Stolker, N. Pourre, C. Babusiaux, A. Glindemann, R. Abuter, A. Amorim, R. Asensio-Torres, W.O. Balmer, M. Benisty, J.-P. Berger, H. Beust, S. Blunt, A. Boccaletti, M. Bonnefoy, H. Bonnet, M.S. Bordoni, G. Bourdarot, W. Brandner, F. Cantalloube, P. Caselli, B. Charnay, G. Chauvin, A. Chavez, E. Choquet, V. Christiaens, Y.