Giant planets and brown dwarfs play a crucial role in star and planet formation, as they are situated at the boundary between planets and stars with uncertain formation mechanisms.
Brown Dwarfs
Posted inBrown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report, Stellar Cartography
A Universal Brown Dwarf Desert Formed Between Planets And Stars
Giant planets and brown dwarfs play a crucial role in star and planet formation, as they are situated at the boundary between planets and stars with uncertain formation mechanisms.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
PICASO 4.0: Clouds And Photochemistry In Climate Models Of Brown Dwarfs And Exoplanets
We present a major update to the open-source atmospheric modeling package PICASO, designed for simulating the thermal structure and spectra of hydrogen-rich atmospheres of brown dwarfs and exoplanets.
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
Tempawral: A Time-Resolved Retrieval Framework for Variable Brown Dwarfs and Exoplanets
Brown dwarfs and exoplanets are thought to host complex atmospheric phenomena such as clouds, storms, and chemical heterogeneity, akin to weather patterns on Earth. These features can produce pronounced spectral […]
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Interstellar, Status Report
A Free-floating-Planet Microlensing Event Caused By A Saturn-mass Object
A population of free-floating planets is known from gravitational microlensing surveys. None have a directly measured mass, owing to a degeneracy with the distance, but the population statistics indicate that […]
![[LEFT:] A Rare Brown Dwarf: HIP 71618 B [RIGHT:] A New Giant Planet: HIP 54515 b -- W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope.](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Discoveries-From-Maunakea-Reveal-1.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Press Release, Stellar Cartography
Discoveries From Maunakea Reveal Hidden Worlds Around Accelerating Stars
Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island have discovered a massive planet and a brown dwarf orbiting distant stars—two rare companions that deepen […]
Posted inAI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Astronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release
First Results From The Subaru Telescope’s OASIS Survey: Direct Imaging Of New Worlds Around Unexplored Stars
The discovery of two remarkable substellar companions orbiting distant stars has been announced by an international team of astronomers using the Subaru Telescope’s sharp adaptive-optics imaging together with precision stellar […]
Posted inAtmospheres, Climate, Weather, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Press Release
Efficiency of Hydrodynamic Atmospheric Escape in Hot Jupiters and Super Earths
We develop a flexible one-dimensional code to model the escape of hydrogen and helium from a hot Jupiter as a result of photoionization from extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) radiation.
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
Sensitivity to Sub-Io-sized Exosatellite Transits In The MIRI LRS Lightcurve Of The Nearest Substellar Worlds
JWST’s unprecedented sensitivity enables precise spectrophotometric monitoring of substellar worlds, revealing atmospheric variability driven by mechanisms operating across different pressure levels.
![Maps of average lensing parameters of simulated microlensing events due to different BFFPs over the 2D space log10[s(AU)]−log10[Mtot(M⊕)]. Here, Fi and Fw are fractions of simulated microlensing events due to BFFPs with intermediate and wide caustic topologies, respectively. ρ? shows the source radius projected on the lens plane and normalized to the Einstein radius, Lc is a length scale for caustic curves, ∆c represents the caustic area, τ is a time scale for microlensing events due to BFFPs, and P is the orbital period of binary lenses. -- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/On-the-Detection-of-Binary-Free-Floating-Planets.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
Posted inAstronomy & Telescopes, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report
On the Detection of Binary Free-Floating Planets in the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey
The recent discovery of 40 binary Jupiter-mass free-floating planets in the Trapezium cluster by the James Webb Space Telescope (Pearson & McCaughrean 2023) has opened new windows and questions in […]