NASA's James Webb Space Telescope identifies 'tiniest free-floating brown dwarf'

Dec. 13 (UPI) -- NASA said its James Webb Space Telescope has spotted the "tiniest free-floating brown dwarf" ever identified.

"Brown dwarfs are objects that straddle the dividing line between stars and planets," the space agency said in a press release Wednesday,

"They form like stars," NASA said. However, unlike stars, Brown dwarfs don't have enough mass to cause nuclear fusion in their cores the way stars do.

Researchers Kevin Luhman of Penn State University and Catarina Alves de Oliviera of the European Space Agency located the brown dwarf by focusing on the relatively young IC 348 star cluster.

"This cluster is young, only about 5 million years old. As a result, any brown dwarfs would still be relatively bright in infrared light, glowing from the heat of their formation," NASA said.

The researchers identified the brown dwarf using the telescope's near-infrared camera and used the near-Infrared spectrograph microshutter array to examine the identified areas.

NASA said it hopes that by observing the brown dwarf, researchers can gain insight into the formation of stars and understand more about massive exoplanets, which have similar characteristics to brown dwarfs.

"A free-floating brown dwarf is easier to study than a giant exoplanet since the latter is hidden within the glare of its host star," NASA said.

Scientists hope to learn more about how Brown dwarfs form out of gas, as they have far less mass than stars.

"We have to ask, how does the star formation process operate at such very, very small masses?" de Olveira said.