Gemini North observations help identify rotational speed limit for brown dwarfs
Three brown dwarfs, often called "failed stars," are spinning faster than any others.
April 19, 2021
Astronomers have discovered the most rapidly rotating brown dwarfs -- three brown dwarfs that each complete a full rotation roughly once every hour. The rate is so extreme that if they rotated any faster, they could come close to tearing apart.
Brown dwarfs are, simply put, failed stars. They form like stars but are less massive and more like giant planets.
Astronomers first measured the rotation speeds of these brown dwarfs using the Spitzer Space Telescope and confirmed them with follow-up observations with the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawaii and the Magellan Baade telescope in Chile. Gemini North is one of the pair of telescopes that make up the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab.