Astronomy

Not all the protostars later become stars. To become a star, an object must have mass at least 80 times of Jupiter mass. These masses will create enough gravitational force to ignite thermonuclear fusion to burning helium on its core as its source of energy. Contrary, if it isn’t having enough mass, it will become a brown dwarf objects.

In fact, brown dwarf objects have been long enough become hypothesis among the astronomers. But evidence of its existence had just revealed on 1995, when astronomers observed an object near by star Gliese 229, about 19 light years in distance. The object discovered by astronomers in Mount Palomar Observatory, California and latterly confirmed by images taken by Hubble Space Telescope. However, the strongest evidence raised by astronomers at California Institute of Technology and Johns Hopkins University, who identify existence of methane in this object — named GL229B. There is no star that contains methane, because this element only exists on the object which had relatively low temperature.

This founded object is 250.000 times fainter compared to our Sun, of the size equal to Jupiter but in 20 to 50 times more massive. Measurement indicates that its temperature is only about 1.300 degree Kelvin. It is very cool when compared to our Sun’s surface temperature that reaching to 7000 till 8000 degree.

Discovery on this object become important due to what referred as “missing mass” on cosmos. Various theories and observational results indicate that we only able to recognize about 10% of entire mass that forming cosmos. Then, where is the other 90%? One theory mentions that some of it gathered in the form of brown dwarf. So, discovery on this kind of objects can assist us to confirm this theory, and will become significant contribution to understanding cosmos.

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