Scientists spot strange aurora on distant celestial object

By Dean Murray via SWNS

Scientists have spotted a mysterious aurora on a distant celestial object.

Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf, an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star, that may display possible aurorae like the familiar Northern Lights on our world.

However, unlike the aurora we see on Earth caused by charged particles from the Sun, the brown dwarf, known as W1935, is an isolated object in space with no nearby star to create an aurora.

NASA says: "This is an unexpected discovery because the brown dwarf is cold and lacks a host star; therefore, there is no obvious source of energy to heat its upper atmosphere and make the methane glow."

The findings are being presented at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans this week.

NASA says: "To help explain the mystery of the infrared emission from methane, the team turned to our solar system.

"Methane in emission is a common feature in gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. The upper-atmosphere heating that powers this emission is linked to aurorae.

On Earth, aurorae are created when energetic particles blown into space from the Sun are captured by Earth’s magnetic field. They cascade down into our atmosphere along magnetic field lines near Earth’s poles, colliding with gas molecules and creating eerie, dancing curtains of light.

Jupiter and Saturn have similar auroral processes that involve interacting with the solar wind, but they also get auroral contributions from nearby active moons like Io (for Jupiter) and Enceladus (for Saturn).

NASA says that for isolated brown dwarfs like W1935, the absence of a stellar wind to contribute to the auroral process and explain the extra energy in the upper atmosphere required for the methane emission is "a mystery".

A team led by Jackie Faherty, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was awarded time with the Webb telescope to investigate 12 cold brown dwarfs. Among those were W1935 – an object that was discovered by citizen scientist Dan Caselden

The team surmises that either unaccounted internal processes like the atmospheric phenomena of Jupiter and Saturn, or external interactions with either interstellar plasma or a nearby active moon, may help account for the emission.

“With W1935, we now have a spectacular extension of a solar system phenomenon without any stellar irradiation to help in the explanation.” Faherty noted. “With Webb, we can really ‘open the hood’ on the chemistry and unpack how similar or different the auroral process may be beyond our solar system,” she added.