ABSTRACTS OF ORAL PRESENTATIONS

    JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE UNVEILS FAINT BROWN DWARFS AND AN UNEXPECTED MOLECULAR DISCOVERY - CATARINA ALVES DE OLIVEIRA

    I will present the discovery of new brown dwarfs in the star-forming cluster IC 348 using the James Webb Space Telescope. Two of the brown dwarfs show the spectral signature of an unidentified hydrocarbon. The same infrared signature was detected by NASA’s Cassini mission in the atmospheres of Saturn and its moon Titan. It has also been seen in the interstellar medium, the gas between stars. This finding, the first detection of this molecule in atmospheres outside of the solar system, challenges current atmospheric models of brown dwarfs and sheds new light on their formation and composition. Based on its luminosity and evolutionary models, the faintest new member of IC 348 has an estimated mass of 3–4 Jupiter masses, making it a strong contender for the least massive free-floating brown dwarf that has been directly imaged to date.
    Press release: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_identifies_tiniest_free-floating_brown_dwarf 
    Published article: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ad00b7 

     

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