Does Tatooine exist? The planet where Anakin and Luke grew up was featured in almost every Star Wars movie and series. And the James Webb Telescope, which regularly provides us with magnificent images of faraway (and very distant) galaxies, has observed a brown dwarf planet that strongly resembles it.
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A brown dwarf in the sand
'VHS 1256 b' is the rather barbaric name of this brown dwarf. What makes it special? It has a reddish hue that has puzzled researchers since its discovery. According to Forbes, VHS 1256 b has a very turbulent atmosphere, full of sand-like clouds. Sasha Hinkley, from the University of Exeter, explained:
A better way to picture these clouds is to compare them to objects made up of tiny particles, except that these silicate clouds are made up of the same stuff as grains of sand.
The James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed the existence of silicate clouds in the atmosphere of the brown dwarf VHS 1256-1257 b. https://t.co/rIsFo9GaHF
— The Universe Space Tech (@ust_magazine) September 5, 2022
To top it all off, its air, laden with methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, would be completely unbreathable. This brown dwarf is not in the hands of the gangster Hutts and is not a very touristy place.
What is a brown dwarf?
Orbiting one of two stars (again, in the manner of Tatooine), VHS 1256 b is located 72 light years from our Solar System and has a mass about 15 times that of Jupiter.
VHS 1256 b is neither exactly a planet, nor really a star, so it is a brown dwarf. According to Universalis:
A brown dwarf is a 'failed' star that cannot stably maintain the hydrogen nuclear fusion reactions that characterize early stellar evolution.
This article was translated from Gentside FR.
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