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NASA'S Spitzer Finds Failed Stars May Succeed in Planet Business



 
 
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Old October 21st 05, 05:04 PM
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Default NASA'S Spitzer Finds Failed Stars May Succeed in Planet Business

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Whitney Clavin (818) 354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

News Release: 2005-160 Oct. 20, 2005

NASA'S Spitzer Finds Failed Stars May Succeed in Planet Business

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted the very beginnings
of what might become planets around the puniest of celestial
orbs - brown dwarfs, or "failed stars."

The telescope's infrared eyes have for the first time detected
clumps of microscopic dust grains and tiny crystals orbiting
five brown dwarfs. These clumps and crystals are thought to
collide and further lump together to eventually make planets.
Similar materials are seen in planet- forming regions around
stars and in comets, the remnants of our own solar system's
construction.

The findings provide evidence that brown dwarfs, despite being
colder and dimmer than stars, undergo the same initial steps
of the planet-building process.

"We are learning that the first stages of planet formation are
more robust than previously believed," said Dr. D?niel Apai,
an astronomer at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and
member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Life and Planets
Astrobiology Center. "Spitzer has given us the possibility to
study how planets are built in widely different environments."

The observations also imply that brown dwarfs might be good
targets for future planet-hunting missions. Astronomers do not
know if life could exist on planets around brown dwarfs.

Brown dwarfs differ from stars largely due to their mass. They
lack the mass to ignite internally and shine brightly. However,
they are believed to arise like stars, out of thick clouds of
gas and dust that collapse under their own weight. And like
stars, brown dwarfs develop disks of gas and dust that circle
around them. Spitzer has observed many of these disks, which
glow at infrared wavelengths.

Apai and his team used Spitzer to collect detailed information
on the minerals that make up the dust disks of six young brown
dwarfs located 520 light-years away, in the Chamaeleon
constellation. The six objects range in mass from about 40 to
70 times that of Jupiter, and they are roughly 1 to 3 million
years old.

The astronomers discovered that five of the six disks contain
dust particles that have crystallized and are sticking together
in what may be the early phases of planet assembling. They
found relatively large grains and many small crystals of a
mineral called olivine.

"We are seeing processed particles that are linking up and
growing in size," said Dr. Ilaria Pascucci, a co-author
also of the University of Arizona. "This is exciting because
we weren't sure if the disks of such cool objects would
behave the same way that stellar disks do."

The team also noticed a flattening of the brown dwarfs' disks,
which is another sign that dust is gathering up into planets.

A paper on these findings appears online today in Science.
Authors of the paper also include Drs. Jeroen Bouwman,
Thomas Henning and Cornelis P. Dullemond of the Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy, Germany; and Dr. Antonella Natta of
the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Italy.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages
the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which made the observations,
was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development
was led by Dr. Jim Houck of Cornell. The NASA Astrobiology
Institute, founded in 1997, is a partnership between NASA, 16
major U.S. teams and six international consortia.

For artist concepts, graphics and more information about
Spitzer, visit

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer/ .

For more information about the NASA Astrobiology Institute,
visit

http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/ .

For more information about NASA and agency programs on the
Web, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/home/ .

-end-

 




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