Bizarre & wonderful · Earlier selection
Webb panorama includes objects only twice Jupiter’s mass
ESA has highlighted extremely small brown dwarfs in a new presentation of Webb observations of the star-forming cluster IC 348.
Its 15 September report describes objects with masses down to around twice Jupiter’s, below the threshold for sustained hydrogen fusion. The observations help researchers investigate how small an object formed through cloud collapse can be. These are distant astronomical measurements, not photographs reproduced on this page.
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ESA ↗ (opens a new tab)Primary institutional report or research paper, independently condensed. Findings and proposals are attributed to the source, with their limitations; no source prose, charts or photography reproduced.
AI-assisted original summary, checked against the linked source on 20 Sept 2026, 01:33 BST. Illustration is AI generated and does not document the event.
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