stargazer have discovered a curious band of cloud swirling across the surface of a brown dwarf called Luhman 16A , similar to the stripes on the open of Jupiter . The finding adds to the oddment of brownish dwarf – oddballs too big to be planet but too small to be star . Although they are wiz - like in composition and organisation , they miss the acute nuclear processes that pass inside stars .
site just 6.5 light - years away , Luhman 16A is part of a brace with Luhman 16B , each weigh about 30 time the mass of Jupiter . They are the closest brownish dwarf twosome to Earth .
To identify the band on the surface of Luhman 16A , the team used a technique called polarimetry . Polarimetry is the measurement of the polarisation of luminousness , a phenomenon that happens when scant wafture vibrate in a single plane . This is what ’s used to create the 3D force in movie house ( where we use peculiar glasses to filter the Light Within ) and it has many applications in astronomy , from the study of planets to the enquiry on the properties of the universe as a whole .
" I often think of polarimetric instruments as an stargazer ’s polarise shades , " enunciate lead generator Maxwell Millar - Blanchaer , a Robert A. Millikan Postdoctoral Scholar in Astronomy at Caltech , in astatement . " But alternatively of trying to block out that public eye we ’re trying to valuate it . "
“ Polarimetry is the only technique that is presently able-bodied to detect bands that do n’t fluctuate in brightness over metre , ” added Millar - Blanchaer , whose study is published inThe Astrophysical Journal . “ This was primal to observe the band of clouds on Luhman 16A , on which the band do not come along to be varying . This is the first sentence that it ’s really been exploited to understand cloud properties outside of the solar system . ”
The team can not image the brown dwarf directly , but the technique is sore to swarm feature . fuse with atmospherical modeling , the data from the polarimetry suggests that Luhman16A might rain down silica . While not enticing weather , it isan wait onefor an object with a temperature almost eminent enough to run silver .
Next - propagation telescopes such as the Extremely expectant Telescope will be able-bodied to exploit this technique and push it far beyond the bounds of clouds to detect liquid water on the surface of a planet .
