PIA21475: Brown Dwarf Weather (Artist's Concept)
 Mission:  Spitzer Space Telescope
 Product Size:  1041 x 585 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  IPAC-Caltech
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA21475.tif (1.615 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA21475.jpg (52.96 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This artist's concept shows what the weather might look like on cool star-like bodies known as brown dwarfs. These giant balls of gas start out life like stars, but lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion at their cores, and instead, fade and cool with time.

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter's "Great Red Spot."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook University

Image Addition Date:
2014-01-06