NASA Captures Extreme Star Storms on Brown Dwarfs

Could there be storms on stars? New research shows that there is. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered swirling, stormy clouds on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs.

"As the brown dwarfs spin on their axis, the alternation of what we think are cloud-free and cloudy regions produces a periodic brightness variation that we can observe," said Stanimir Metchev, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These are signs of patchiness in the cloud cover."

Brown dwarfs form the same way as stars do. However, they lack the mass to fuse atoms continually and blossom into full-fledged stars. Because of this, they're a bit like massive cousins of Jupiter. While much cooler than normal stars, brown dwarfs are still very hot-far too hot to support liquid water.

In order to learn a bit more about brown dwarfs, the researchers studied them using the Spitzer telescope. This allowed them to examine 44 brown dwarfs as they rotated on their axis for up to 20 hours. While previous results showed that there would be some turbulent weather on brown dwarfs, the researchers were surprised that most, if not all, of the brown dwarfs were racked by storms.

The cloudy regions on brown dwarfs likely take the form of torrential storms, accompanied by winds and, possibly, lightning more violent than that on Jupiter or any other planet in our solar system. In addition, it's likely that any "rain" in these storms take the form of hot sand, molten iron or salts.

This isn't all the researchers found, though. Some of the brown dwarfs that the scientists examined rotated much more slowly than any previously measured. These findings may just pave the way for future studies.

"We don't yet know why these particular brown dwarfs spin so slowly, but several interesting possibilities exist," said Aren Heinze, one of the researchers, in a news release. "A brown dwarf that rotates slowly may have formed in an unusual way-or it may even have been slowed down by the gravity of a yet-undiscovered planet in a close orbit around it."

The findings may lead to a better understanding of brown dwarfs and their cousins, the gas-giant planets. By understanding the weather on brown dwarfs, astronomers can open new windows to research on other planets.

The findings were presented at a news conference at the 223^rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 7^th.