Researchers from the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported the discovery of signs
During the study of the sky area in the regionOphiuchus molecular cloud, scientists accidentally discovered an expanding shell of carbon monoxide ejected by an object with a temperature below 3,000 K. The study showed that it is associated with a brown dwarf.
In their work, the scientists tested three differentversions that could explain the origin of the shell. They considered the possible loss of mass by a giant star further outside the molecular cloud, the collapse of a dense molecular cloud, and a mass ejection on a young star. The observational results are in best agreement with the version of the origin of carbon monoxide from a brown dwarf.
An expanding shell of carbon monoxide, with an asterisk indicating the location of the brown dwarf. Image: Ruiz-Rodriguez et al., arXiv
Such objects are intermediate between the planets andstars. Their mass is from 13 to 80 masses of Jupiter. Brown dwarfs can burn deuterium (a heavy isotope of hydrogen), but cannot use ordinary hydrogen as nuclear fuel. The researchers believe that a powerful flash of deuterium could have led to the ejection of the outer shell, but this hypothesis requires additional verification.
The researchers note that the carbon monoxide shell propagates in an elliptical shape, making the ejection the first observed case of a quasi-spherical mass loss on a brown dwarf.
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On the cover: an artistic illustration of a brown dwarf. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech