2023-09-08 14:58:10
Today we invite you to travel again through space outside the Earth, in the direction of the constellation of Lira, to a singular object, a brown dwarf, that is, an object too large and hot to be considered a planet but much more small and cold as a star.
Despite being more than 18 light years away from us, Joan Climet, a researcher at the University of Valencia and the International University of Valencia, and his team have managed to detect a radiation belt in the brown dwarf like the one that causes auroras. that are observed here on Earth and on other planets of the Solar System
The enormous distance that separates us from LSR J1835+3259, which is how the brown dwarf is known in scientific circles, prevents it from being observed beyond a reddish and distant point of light by an optical telescope, but not with a set of radio telescopes such as the one that makes up the European long-baseline interferometry network European VLBI Network (EVN).
To obtain the image of the radiation belt of LSR J1835+3259, the European VLBI network combined giant radio antennas spread across the planet in places as distant as Spain, Sweden, China and South Africa. The set, operating in unison as a single radio telescope with dimensions equivalent to those of the entire Earth, managed to obtain images of the brown dwarf with a resolution 50 times better than that of the James Webb space telescope.
Radio emissions detected by the European VLBI network and auroral activity are linked because the charged particles that cause auroras can also produce radio radiation as they are forced to move in spiral loops through magnetic fields.
Brown dwarfs are part of a larger group of astronomical bodies called ultracold dwarfs, which also includes very low mass stars with a surface temperature approximately half that of the Sun.
The study has been published in the journal Science and suggests that ultracold dwarfs that emit radiation have magnetic fields arranged by dipoles with morphologies and auroras similar to those of gas giants like Jupiter.
We invite you to listen to Joan Climent, researcher at the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Universitat de València and professor at the International University of Valencia,
Reference:
Climent JB , Guirado JC , Perez-Torres M , Marcaide JM , Peña-Moñino L ( 2023 ) Evidence for a radiation belt around a brown dwarf Science doi: 10.1126/science.adg6635
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