Astronomers pinpoint rare binary brown dwarf

Astronomers working on 'first light' results from a newly commissioned telescope in Chile made a chance discovery that led to the identification of a rare eclipsing binary brown dwarf system. The discovery was led by an international team of researchers, including scientists at the University of Birmingham, working on the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project. SPECULOOS involves the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the University of Liège , the University of Cambridge , the University of Bern , the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canaries , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and other partner institutions. SPECULOOS' mission is to investigate planets surrounding ultra-cool dwarfs, a category that includes the smallest stars that exist, as well as objects called 'brown dwarfs'. Brown dwarfs are 'sub-stellar' objects, meaning they have less mass than a star but more than a planet. Brown dwarfs are unable to sustain the fusion of hydrogen into helium, a process that powers the light from normal stars like the Sun. Astronomers predict that these ultra-cool dwarfs should host large populations of close-by, potentially habitable rocky planets, offering a wealth of opportunity to explore a diversity of atmospheres and climates.