NASA's Webb Telescope Identifies First Possible Brown Dwarfs Outside Our Galaxy.

The James Webb Space Telescope is revolutionizing the ability to detect celestial objects that were previously considered unattainable, including findings that could contribute to our understanding of the origins of the universe. A group of astronomers has identified for the first time a "rich population of brown dwarf candidates" outside our galaxy. This observation was made possible thanks to the telescope's Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) instrument.

So far, around 3,000 brown dwarfs are known within the Milky Way, but Webb has enabled the identification of candidates located 200,000 light-years away. According to Peter Zeidler, the leader of the AURA/STScI team for the European Space Agency, "only with the incredible sensitivity and spatial resolution at the right wavelength range is it possible to detect these objects at such distances." Zeidler also emphasized that these types of detections have never been feasible from Earth-based observatories in the foreseeable future.

Brown dwarfs are objects that are not classified as either planets or stars and have a mass between 13 and 75 times that of Jupiter, without being under the gravitational influence of a star like exoplanets. While they are larger than gas giants, they are not massive enough to generate significant amounts of light, which has earned them the nickname "failed stars." The scientists involved in this study suggest that their observations support the theory that brown dwarfs form in a similar way to stars but do not accumulate enough mass to become fully developed stars.

According to the researchers, it may be that a "large amount" of the mass of the universe exists in the form of brown dwarfs. Since they are primarily dark and emit very little light, they could be key to solving the "missing mass" problem that astronomers are still trying to understand.

The new group of brown dwarf candidates was found in a star cluster called NGC 602, which is located near the boundaries of the small dwarf galaxy in the Magellanic Cloud. Previous studies conducted by Hubble showed that this cluster contains low-mass young stars, but Webb has allowed for a closer examination. The findings suggest that this cluster is in an environment comparable to that of the primitive universe, implying that studying brown dwarfs could provide clues about the formation of stars and planets that occurred billions of years ago.