Possibly the smallest stars ever discovered
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA)
The border between what’s a star and what’s a planet is blurry, and new findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made it even less clear. These objects appear to be brown dwarfs, commonly referred to as failed stars, but they’re closer in size to giant planets – they may be the smallest stars ever spotted.
Kevin Luhman at the Pennsylvania State University and his colleagues spotted these three bodies in a star-forming cluster called IC 348, which is about…