The European Southern Observatory for the first time has mapped the surface of a brown dwarf. ESO's Very Large Telescope charted the dark and light surface of Luhman 16B, an astronomical object known as a brown dwarf.
Brown Dwarfs are also known as a substar since these objects are too large to be planets but are not massive enough to be called stars. These objects are believed to be formed the way stars are formed but did not have enough density at the core to start a nuclear fusion.
The surface map of Luhman 16B is the first charting of the brown star which included the light and dark features of the surface. It is also the first mapping of the weather on the surface of Luhman 16B.
The brown dwarf, discovered in 2013, is only six light years from Earth and can be found in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Luhman 16B forms a pair with Luhman 16A which is the brighter of the two components. The pair is collectively referred to as Luhman 16AB.
The imaging was made possible with the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES) attached to the VLT.
