Two coplanar, substellar objects orbiting within 3 a.u.
In the meantime, the flood of new discoveries and follow-up observations will teach astronomers a great deal about the diversity of substellar objects and the formation and commonality of planets.
Such direct measurements will enable astronomers to test the cooling models that are used to derive masses of
substellar objects indirectly, based on the objects' ages and luminosities.--R.
A challenge for theorists is to explain the origin of all
substellar objects. In the past two years, Jayawardhana, Mohanty, and their collaborators have detected accretion disks around many young brown dwarfs, suggesting that brown dwarfs form the same way stars do.
Such a nearby trophy offers astronomers "a new benchmark in the study of
substellar objects, amenable to a wide range of detailed atmospheric and chemical observations," write its discoverers in a paper to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Some stellar specialists conclude that for now we are better off referring to these bodies as brown dwarfs, substellar objects that lack the mass to sustain hydrogen fusion in their cores.
The discovery of gas-and-dust disks around substellar objects in Orion makes it ever more apparent that brown dwarfs form when interstellar clouds become self-gravitating and collapse, just as stars themselves do.
Even dimmer and cooler beasts lie hidden in the stellar cellar, things labeled spectral classes L and T, which encompass
substellar objects such as brown dwarfs.
If confirmed, the spectra would at least prove that the "planets" are
substellar objects at the low end of the brown-dwarf mass range and not reddened background stars.
The year 1995 will likely be remembered by astronomers for the culmination of a 20-year hunt: the search for the
substellar objects known as brown dwarfs.
As VB10's properties lie tantaliz-ingly close to those of brown dwarfs, Linsky suggests that flare activity be sought even among
substellar objects.
A planet cannot sustain fusion of any sort, thus excluding large
substellar objects such as brown dwarfs.