Astrophysical Weather: Finding the Clouds on nearby Brown Dwarfs
How do you measure the clouds in a brown dwarf atmosphere when the entire brown dwarf is a single, unresolved dot on your image! Read on to find out…
One Star, Two Star, Brown Star, Blue Star
Enter the observed oddball: a subdwarf B (sdB) star. These unexpected stars are fusing helium into carbon and oxygen in their core and only have a thin hydrogen envelope. So, where did the hydrogen go?
Perils of a Cooling Host Star: Life on planets around white and brown dwarfs
The holy grail for exoplanet science would be to find an inhabited planet. Not just habitable, but actually inhabited. But where are we most likely to find those planets? Only around Sun-like stars, or could life thrive around other types of stars? Could evolved stars like white dwarfs or neutron stars harbor life? Could brown dwarfs, the so-called failed stars, have inhabited planets?