Astronomers Measure the Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf for the First Time. Spoiler: Insanely Fast

In some ways, brown dwarfs are nature’s stellar oddballs. A lot of stars exhibit strange behaviour at different times in their evolution. But brown dwarfs aren’t even certain that they’re stars at all.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Measure the Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf for the First Time. Spoiler: Insanely Fast

In some ways, brown dwarfs are nature’s stellar oddballs. A lot of stars exhibit strange behaviour at different times in their evolution. But brown dwarfs aren’t even certain that they’re stars at all.

more…

Much faster than on Jupiter.

dv said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Astronomers Measure the Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf for the First Time. Spoiler: Insanely Fast

In some ways, brown dwarfs are nature’s stellar oddballs. A lot of stars exhibit strange behaviour at different times in their evolution. But brown dwarfs aren’t even certain that they’re stars at all.

more…

Much faster than on Jupiter.

> Much faster than on Jupiter.

What is the fastest in the solar system? Neptune has winds near 550 metres per second.

> the first-ever wind speed measurement for a body outside our Solar System. They clocked the wind speed on 2MASS J1047+21 at 650 meters per second.

First ever? Hasn’t anyone looked for a wind speed on a red dwarf like Proxima?

Huh, perhaps nobody has ever published the wind speed on Proxima.

What makes 2MASS J1047+21 so special? Discovered in 1999. Not within 6 parsecs of us.

> https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.1287 and http://web.archive.org/web/20160310122739/https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430101054.htm

It’s the coolest radio-flaring brown dwarf. With a spectral category of T6.5 dwarf that makes it very cool even for a brown dwarf. The spectral sequence from hot to cold goes L0 to L9, T0 to T9, Y0 to Y1.

It’s temperature near 900 Kelvin, not that much hotter than Venus. Venus has a temperature of 735 Kelvin. By spectral type Y1 it’s cool enough that we can call it a planet rather than a brown dwarf.

So we have here an object that:

• Is a little bit bigger in diameter than Jupiter.
• Has a temperature a little bit hotter than Venus.
• With wind speeds a little faster than Neptune.

I feel right at home.