Distant Giant Planets Form Differently than ‘Failed Stars’

February 10, 2020 • by Staff Writer

A team of astronomers led by Brendan Bowler of The University of Texas at Austin has probed the formation process of giant exoplanets and brown dwarfs, a class of objects that are more massive than giant planets, but not massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion in their cores to shine like true stars.

Nine different shaped circular and elliptical representations of orbits

By patiently watching giant planets and brown dwarfs orbit their host stars, Bowler and his team were able to constrain the orbit shapes even though only a small portion of the orbit has been monitored. The longer the time baseline, the smaller the range of possible orbits.  These plots show nine of the 27 systems from their study. Credit: Brendan Bowler (UT-Austin)


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