This artist's animation shows a brown dwarf surrounded by a swirling disc
of planet-building dust. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spotted such a
disc around a surprisingly low-mass brown dwarf, or "failed star." The
brown dwarf, called OTS 44, is only 15 times the size of Jupiter, making
it the smallest brown dwarf known to host a planet-forming, or
protoplanetary disc.
Astronomers believe that this unusual system will eventually spawn
planets. If so, they speculate that OTS 44's disc has enough mass to
make one small gas giant and a few Earth-sized rocky planets.
OTS 44 is about 2 million years old. At this relatively young age, brown
dwarfs are warm and appear reddish in color. With age, they grow cooler
and darker.
