The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the first brown dwarf star candidates outside the Milky Way. The European Space Agency (ESA) said that these candidates reside in the star cluster NGC 602 that lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, roughly 2,00,000 light-years from Earth.
🆕 Webb has found candidates for the first young brown dwarfs outside the Milky Way! 🟤🔬 Read more: https://t.co/ol8NQD8Zb7 or 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/dh5v0HtbPc
— ESA Webb Telescope (@ESA_Webb) October 23, 2024
“Only thanks to the incredible sensitivity and resolution in the right wavelength range we are able to detect these objects at such great distances. This has never been possible before and also will remain impossible with telescopes on the ground for the foreseeable future,” said lead author Peter Zeidler of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in a statement.
The brown dwarfs, as ESA describes it, are massive cousins of giant gas planets roughly 13 to 75 times more massive than Jupiter. Brown dwarfs are also considered failed stars as they could not sustain nuclear fusion in their cores.
Elena Manjavacas, also a member of the STScI, said that there are nearly 3,000 known brown dwarfs but all of them are in our galaxy. The discovery, which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal, could be the first outside the Milky Way.
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“Brown dwarfs seem to form in the same way as stars, they just don’t capture enough mass to become a fully fledged star. Our results fit well with this theory,” Zeidler said.
Scientists observed the NGC 602 region on the Magellanic Cloud due to the dark clouds of dense dust and ionised gas as these are one of the key ingredients for star formation. Based on the observations made using the Webb telescope’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) in April 2023, the study team concluded there’s a presence of brown dwarf like entities.
“These are the first giant exoplanet analogues outside the Milky Way,” said Manjavacas. “We need to be ready for ground-breaking discoveries in these new objects.”
In the following days, the mission team will follow up on the observations to confirm their true identity.
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(Image: NASA/ESA)
