Mysterious auroras are being seen on a brown dwarf, even though it has no host star

The new discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has left the scientists baffled with the mysteries of brown dwarf and auroral processes. The JWST found a new brown dwarf, which is an object that is much larger than gas giants like Jupiter but smaller than a star. NASA has discovered many brown dwarfs in the past, but this one is different.

This brown dwarf, namely, W1935 emitted infrared emission from methane, suggesting there is some energy in its upper atmosphere. But W1935 lacks a host star and is quite cold, which is a clear indication that there is no source of upper atmosphere energy there.

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What scientists concluded so far from this mystery is that there is a possible presence of some auroral process on the isolated brown dwarf. The findings of this unexpected discovery are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.

Mystery of isolated brown dwarf with possible aurora puzzlesscientists

To solve this mystery, scientists turned to our solar system to find answers. Methane is a common emitting product in gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn. The upper-atmosphere heating methane might be linked to aurora, deduced scientists.

On Earth, auroras are created when energetic particles from the Sun are captured by the planet’s magnetic field. They are seen in Earth’s atmosphere along the magnetic field lines near Earth’s poles when they collide with gas molecules and create colourful dancing lights in the sky.

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Jupiter and Saturn have similar processes in aurora formation. It involves the interaction of particles with the solar wind, which also contributes to nearby moons of the planets.

For isolated brown dwarfs like W1935, the absence of external solar wind suggests that there is some internal process going on with the brown dwarf that is supplying energy to its atmosphere. Or, there is a possibility that W1935 may not be completely isolated but could be receiving an influx of particles from a nearby active moon.

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The discovery was made by a team of scientists, led by American Museum of Natural History astronomer Jackie Faherty, who made the discovery while investigating 12 brown dwarfs with JWST.

It is the first time that the JWST observations of W1935 have reported methane emission from a brown dwarf, indicating a possible aurora.

(With inputs from agencies)