Research director John Gizis of the University of Delaware believes that this star is the size of Jupiter and that the storm, a persistent phenomenon that has lasted for a minimum of two years and probably much longer, is similar. to the Great Red Spot on the planet Jupiter.
The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal . Although scientists were already aware of cloudy exoplanets, this is the most accurate evidence of a cloudy star available to date. It is an astro known as W1906 + 40, which belongs to a class of celestial objects called L-type dwarfs. L-type dwarfs are considered stars because they are capable of fusing atoms and generate light , while brown dwarfs, due to to their lack of atomic fusion, they are considered as failed stars.
For a star, W1906 + 40 is relatively cool. Its temperature is about 2,200 degrees Kelvin, low enough for clouds to form in its atmosphere. The clouds of L-type dwarf stars are made up of tiny minerals, according to Gizis. The Spitzer telescope had observed other cloudy brown dwarfs before, but not as this time with a storm that lasts at least two years. In their study, Gizis and his team analyzed this object discovered by WISE in 2011.
Later they realized that he was in an area that had been observed by the Kepler space telescope during a mission trying to evaluate the variations of light in the stars to locate planets in orbit around them. Some of the data collected by the space telescope revealed that the variation of light in the stars was not caused by the transit of a planet but by the presence of sunspots in the stars , and in this case, by the action of a storm as later confirmed by the Spitzer telescope.
Thanks to its infrared detectors, Spitzer found that the diameter of this colossal storm could contain three Earths and that it rotates around the star every 9 hours. Observed at different wavelengths, astronomers believe that if we could travel to it we would see a dark spot in the polar zone.
The researchers’ project is to continue using the Kepler and Spitzer telescopes to detect more storms around other dwarf stars, although they still do not know “if these types of phenomena are common in dwarf stars or why they last so long “, concludes Gizis .
