Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

This visualization shows a brown dwarf looming in the foreground, with its red dwarf companion floating far away. Some scientists believe that brown dwarfs could have bands or stripes similar in appearance to Jupiter.

A team of researchers and citizen scientists discovered 13 new red dwarf and brown dwarf binary systems in NASA's WISE and NEOWISE data that will help scientists better define the differences between stars and planets.

Previously, only about 20 confirmed pairs of this nature were known, so this 60% increase to the population provides researchers with more opportunities to theorize how these systems form. Federico Marocco, a staff scientist at Caltech IPAC, and his colleagues have published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal on May 29, 2024 that outlines the systems and their possible formation scenarios.

Provider: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer

Image Source: /image/wise/WISE-Binary-BD