Opinion
Joe Scott on MSNOpinion

Why brown dwarfs aren’t planets or stars

Brown dwarfs are the weird middle-ground of space - not a planet, but not a real star either. They’re massive enough to “smolder,” but not powerful enough to fully ignite like the stars we’re used to.
Astronomy has a way of defying labels. Just when researchers think they've drawn a clean line between two cosmic categories, nature tosses in something unexpected. Take stars and planets. A star is a ...
Astronomers have found evidence for a striped pattern of clouds on the brown dwarf Luhman 16A, illustrated here. The red object in the background is Luhman 16B, the partner brown dwarf to Luhman 16A.