It’s giving rainbows and unicorns, like a middle school binder 🦄🌈
Meet NGC 602, a young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud (one of our satellite galaxies), where astronomers using @NASAWebb have found candidates for the first brown dwarfs outside of our galaxy. This star cluster has a similar environment to the kinds of star-forming regions that would have existed in the early Universe—with very low amounts of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. It’s drastically different from our own solar neighborhood and close enough to study in detail.
Brown dwarfs are… not quite stars, but also not quite gas giant planets either. Typically they range from about 13 to 75 Jupiter masses. They are sometimes free-floating and not gravitationally bound to a star like a planet would be. But they do share some characteristics with exoplanets, like storm patterns and atmospheric composition.
Hubble showed us that NGC 602 harbors some very young low-mass stars; Webb is showing us how significant and extensive objects like brown dwarfs are in this cluster. Scientists are excited to better be able to understand how they form, particularly in an environment similar to the harsh conditions of the early universe.

Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

#nasa #webb #galaxy #space #stars #science #astronomy #universe