* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    General Hospital’s Rena Sofer Exits as Lois — But the Door Isn’t Closed – Yahoo

    General Hospital’s Rena Sofer Exits as Lois — But the Door Isn’t Closed – Yahoo

    CNN Launches New Show – What to Know About Host Elex Michaelson – Central Oregon Daily

    Get to Know Elex Michaelson: The Dynamic New Host Taking CNN by Storm

    Johnny Depp Set To Finally Make His Big Hollywood Comeback After Amber Heard Controversy – Yahoo

    Johnny Depp Set for a Triumphant Hollywood Comeback Following Amber Heard Controversy

    ‘Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc’ Review: Hit Manga Gets an Ultra-Violent, Surprisingly Emotional Big-Screen Adaptation – Yahoo

    Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Review: A Brutal and Unexpectedly Emotional Big-Screen Adaptation

    Reba McEntire Details Personal Relationship With Late Stepson Brandon Blackstock – KNDU

    Reba McEntire Shares Emotional Tribute to Her Late Stepson Brandon Blackstock

    Sacramento city leaders approve adding 2 entertainment zones in midtown – CBS News

    Sacramento City Leaders Approve Two Thrilling New Entertainment Zones in Midtown

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Comments to EU Regarding the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Technology Transfer Guidelines – Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

    Have Your Say: Share Your Thoughts on the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Guidelines

    Ghost Tapping is exploiting tap-to-pay technology in order to steal your money; what your need to know – ABC7 New York

    Ghost Tapping: How Thieves Are Using Tap-to-Pay Technology to Steal Your Money and What You Need to Know

    New technology for grading and packing dates – FreshPlaza

    Revolutionary Technology Transforms Date Grading and Packing Process

    Project underway to upgrade technology on 911 towers in Kanawha County – WCHS

    Kanawha County Launches Major Upgrade to 911 Tower Technology

    Next steps: Technology opens new options for greater mobility – Missouri Independent

    Next Steps: How Technology is Opening Exciting New Doors to Greater Mobility

    Rydberg Technologies Inc. Announces Launch of Rydberg Photonics in Berlin – The Quantum Insider

    Rydberg Technologies Launches Exciting New Photonics Division in Berlin

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    General Hospital’s Rena Sofer Exits as Lois — But the Door Isn’t Closed – Yahoo

    General Hospital’s Rena Sofer Exits as Lois — But the Door Isn’t Closed – Yahoo

    CNN Launches New Show – What to Know About Host Elex Michaelson – Central Oregon Daily

    Get to Know Elex Michaelson: The Dynamic New Host Taking CNN by Storm

    Johnny Depp Set To Finally Make His Big Hollywood Comeback After Amber Heard Controversy – Yahoo

    Johnny Depp Set for a Triumphant Hollywood Comeback Following Amber Heard Controversy

    ‘Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc’ Review: Hit Manga Gets an Ultra-Violent, Surprisingly Emotional Big-Screen Adaptation – Yahoo

    Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc Review: A Brutal and Unexpectedly Emotional Big-Screen Adaptation

    Reba McEntire Details Personal Relationship With Late Stepson Brandon Blackstock – KNDU

    Reba McEntire Shares Emotional Tribute to Her Late Stepson Brandon Blackstock

    Sacramento city leaders approve adding 2 entertainment zones in midtown – CBS News

    Sacramento City Leaders Approve Two Thrilling New Entertainment Zones in Midtown

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Comments to EU Regarding the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Technology Transfer Guidelines – Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

    Have Your Say: Share Your Thoughts on the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Guidelines

    Ghost Tapping is exploiting tap-to-pay technology in order to steal your money; what your need to know – ABC7 New York

    Ghost Tapping: How Thieves Are Using Tap-to-Pay Technology to Steal Your Money and What You Need to Know

    New technology for grading and packing dates – FreshPlaza

    Revolutionary Technology Transforms Date Grading and Packing Process

    Project underway to upgrade technology on 911 towers in Kanawha County – WCHS

    Kanawha County Launches Major Upgrade to 911 Tower Technology

    Next steps: Technology opens new options for greater mobility – Missouri Independent

    Next Steps: How Technology is Opening Exciting New Doors to Greater Mobility

    Rydberg Technologies Inc. Announces Launch of Rydberg Photonics in Berlin – The Quantum Insider

    Rydberg Technologies Launches Exciting New Photonics Division in Berlin

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Possible Aurorae on Isolated Brown Dwarf

January 9, 2024
in Science
NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Possible Aurorae on Isolated Brown Dwarf
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Infrared emission from methane suggests atmospheric heating by auroral processes.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf, W1935, is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source for the upper atmosphere energy. The team speculates that the methane emission may be due to processes generating aurorae.

These findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.

To help explain the mystery of the infrared emission from methane, the team turned to our solar system. Methane in emission is a common feature in gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. The upper-atmosphere heating that powers this emission is linked to aurorae.

Image: Artist Concept Brown Dwarf W1935

On Earth, aurorae are created when energetic particles blown into space from the Sun are captured by Earth’s magnetic field. They cascade down into our atmosphere along magnetic field lines near Earth’s poles, colliding with gas molecules and creating eerie, dancing curtains of light. Jupiter and Saturn have similar auroral processes that involve interacting with the solar wind, but they also get auroral contributions from nearby active moons like Io (for Jupiter) and Enceladus (for Saturn).

For isolated brown dwarfs like W1935, the absence of a stellar wind to contribute to the auroral process and explain the extra energy in the upper atmosphere required for the methane emission is a mystery. The team surmises that either unaccounted internal processes like the atmospheric phenomena of Jupiter and Saturn, or external interactions with either interstellar plasma or a nearby active moon, may help account for the emission.

A Detective Story

The aurorae’s discovery played out like a detective story. A team led by Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was awarded time with the Webb telescope to investigate 12 cold brown dwarfs. Among those were W1935 – an object that was discovered by citizen scientist Dan Caselden, who worked with the Backyard Worlds zooniverse project – and W2220, an object that was discovered using NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer. Webb revealed in exquisite detail that W1935 and W2220 appeared to be near clones of each other in composition. They also shared similar brightness, temperatures, and spectral features of water, ammonia, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. The striking exception was that W1935 showed emission from methane, as opposed to the anticipated absorption feature that was observed toward W2220. This was seen at a distinct infrared wavelength to which Webb is uniquely sensitive.

“We expected to see methane because methane is all over these brown dwarfs. But instead of absorbing light, we saw just the opposite: The methane was glowing. My first thought was, what the heck? Why is methane emission coming out of this object?” said Faherty.

The team used computer models to infer what might be behind the emission. The modeling work showed that W2220 had an expected distribution of energy throughout the atmosphere, getting cooler with increasing altitude. W1935, on the other hand, had a surprising result. The best model favored a temperature inversion, where the atmosphere got warmer with increasing altitude.  “This temperature inversion is really puzzling,” said Ben Burningham, a co-author from the University of Hertfordshire in England and lead modeler on the work. “We have seen this kind of phenomenon in planets with a nearby star that can heat the stratosphere, but seeing it in an object with no obvious external heat source is wild.”  

Image: Spectra W1935 vs W2220

Clues from our Solar System

For clues, the team looked in our own backyard, to the planets of our solar system. The gas giant planets can serve as proxies for what is seen going on more than 40 light-years away in the atmosphere of W1935.

The team realized that temperature inversions are prominent in planets like Jupiter and Saturn. There is still ongoing work to understand the causes of their stratospheric heating, but leading theories for the solar system involve external heating by aurorae and internal energy transport from deeper in the atmosphere (with the former a leading explanation).

Brown Dwarf Aurora Candidates in Context

This is not the first time an aurora has been used to explain a brown dwarf observation. Astronomers have detected radio emission coming from several warmer brown dwarfs and invoked aurorae as the most likely explanation. Searches were conducted with ground-based telescopes like the Keck Observatory for infrared signatures from these radio-emitting brown dwarfs to further characterize the phenomenon, but were inconclusive.

W1935 is the first auroral candidate outside the solar system with the signature of methane emission. It’s also the coldest auroral candidate outside our solar system, with an effective temperature of about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), about 600 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than Jupiter.

In our solar system the solar wind is a primary contributor to auroral processes, with active moons like Io and Enceladus playing a role for planets like Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. W1935 lacks a companion star entirely, so a stellar wind cannot contribute to the phenomenon. It is yet to be seen whether an active moon might play a role in the methane emission on W1935. 

“With W1935, we now have a spectacular extension of a solar system phenomenon without any stellar irradiation to help in the explanation.” Faherty noted. “With Webb, we can really ‘open the hood’ on the chemistry and unpack how similar or different the auroral process may be beyond our solar system,” she added.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Want to help discover a new world?

Want to help discover a new world? Join the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project and search the realm beyond Neptune for new brown dwarfs and planets. Or try NASA’s new Burst Chaser citizen science project, which launched Jan. 9.

Downloads

Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Right click the images in this article to open a larger version in a new tab/window.

Media Contacts

Laura Betz – [email protected], Rob Gutro– [email protected]
NASA’s  Goddard Space Flight Center, , Greenbelt, Md.

Christine Pulliam – [email protected]
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Related Information

Brown Dwarfs

More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/

More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/

Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/

Related For Kids

What is the Webb Telescope?

SpacePlace for Kids

En Español

Ciencia de la NASA

NASA en español 

Space Place para niños

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Nasa – https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-finds-signs-of-possible-aurorae-on-isolated-brown-dwarf/

Tags: findsNASA’sscience
Previous Post

Be a Burst Chaser and Witness the Most Powerful Explosions in the Universe!

Next Post

NASA Shares Progress Toward Early Artemis Moon Missions with Crew

80,000 Coloradans projected to drop health insurance amid premium spike – KUSA.com

80,000 Coloradans Expected to Lose Health Insurance as Premiums Soar

October 26, 2025
Trump departs for Asia where he will meet with China’s Xi. Here’s what else to expect – PBS

Trump departs for Asia where he will meet with China’s Xi. Here’s what else to expect – PBS

October 26, 2025
New Research Shows Changing Winters Will Hit Northern Lakes the Hardest – Hometown Focus

New Research Reveals How Changing Winters Threaten Northern Lakes the Most

October 25, 2025
Scientists reversed brain aging and memory loss in mice – Science Daily

Breakthrough Discovery: Scientists Reverse Brain Aging and Restore Memory in Mice

October 25, 2025
It’s alive! Spooky science activities to take place Oct. 25-26 at Discovery Playhouse – KFVS12

It’s Alive! Exciting Spooky Science Activities Coming to Discovery Playhouse Oct. 25-26

October 25, 2025
Buying property in Israel: how to choose between lifestyle and investment goals – Ynetnews

Buying Property in Israel: Balancing Your Lifestyle Dreams with Smart Investment Choices

October 25, 2025
Comments to EU Regarding the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Technology Transfer Guidelines – Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Have Your Say: Share Your Thoughts on the Draft Revised Technology Transfer Block Exemption Regulation and Guidelines

October 25, 2025
The NBA Made a Big Bet on Sports Gambling—and It Just Blew Up – The Wall Street Journal

The NBA Made a Big Bet on Sports Gambling—and It Just Blew Up – The Wall Street Journal

October 25, 2025
The $500m slugger who is taking Canada to the World Series – BBC

The $500 Million Slugger Powering Canada’s Journey to World Series Glory

October 25, 2025
Russian Central Bank Cuts Key Rate to 16.5% as Economy Slows – The Moscow Times

Russian Central Bank Cuts Key Rate to 16.5% in Response to Economic Slowdown

October 25, 2025

Categories

Archives

October 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (886)
  • Economy (907)
  • Entertainment (21,778)
  • General (17,803)
  • Health (9,949)
  • Lifestyle (920)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (908)
  • Politics (918)
  • Science (16,118)
  • Sports (21,407)
  • Technology (15,887)
  • World (890)

Recent News

80,000 Coloradans projected to drop health insurance amid premium spike – KUSA.com

80,000 Coloradans Expected to Lose Health Insurance as Premiums Soar

October 26, 2025
Trump departs for Asia where he will meet with China’s Xi. Here’s what else to expect – PBS

Trump departs for Asia where he will meet with China’s Xi. Here’s what else to expect – PBS

October 26, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version