A brown dwarf – partway between a planet and a star – has been spotted engulfed in a cloud of gas, which it probably produced after a huge pulse of heat blasted through it
An artist impression of a brown dwarf
Chuck Carter and Gregg Hallinan/Caltech
A strange “failed star” has shed its outer layers – an event that astronomers had never seen before. The celestial body appears to be surrounded by a bubble of gas that was mostly blasted off by an immense pulse of heat.
Dary Ruíz-Rodríguez at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia and her colleagues were looking for the early signs of planets forming when they spotted what seemed to be a bubble of carbon monoxide. “When I found this object it was …