NASA and Caltech researchers used SPHEREx data to examine 33 nearby brown dwarfs, spanning 7 to 100 light-years from Earth and the L, T, and Y spectral classes. SPHEREx surveys the whole sky in 102 continuous channels from 0.75 to 5 microns, capturing much of the infrared energy emitted by these faint objects.
The observations exposed major weaknesses in five leading atmospheric models: they missed flux features between 1 and 2.5 microns, failed to reproduce an opacity window near 4 microns, and sometimes required physically unrealistic size estimates. The data did show carbon monoxide falling sharply and methane becoming dominant below 1,000 K, consistent with one model assuming weak vertical mixing. SPHEREx is expected to catalog thousands more brown dwarfs during its two-year survey, providing empirical constraints for improved atmosphere models and exoplanet science.
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/spherex-just-took-the-fingerprints-of-failed-stars-across-our-cosmic-neighborhood
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npub1sx…dz7z7
2026-10-15 13:55:16 UTC
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npub1sxexewvzysc3affq4yzzh7w8e3udyujap2vlj7t6lkdg5dvhp24q4dz7z7Published at
2026-10-15 13:55:16 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "NASA and Caltech researchers used SPHEREx data to examine 33 nearby brown dwarfs, spanning 7 to 100 light-years from Earth and the L, T, and Y spectral classes. SPHEREx surveys the whole sky in 102 continuous channels from 0.75 to 5 microns, capturing much of the infrared energy emitted by these faint objects.\n\nThe observations exposed major weaknesses in five leading atmospheric models: they missed flux features between 1 and 2.5 microns, failed to reproduce an opacity window near 4 microns, and sometimes required physically unrealistic size estimates. The data did show carbon monoxide falling sharply and methane becoming dominant below 1,000 K, consistent with one model assuming weak vertical mixing. SPHEREx is expected to catalog thousands more brown dwarfs during its two-year survey, providing empirical constraints for improved atmosphere models and exoplanet science.\n\nhttps://www.universetoday.com/articles/spherex-just-took-the-fingerprints-of-failed-stars-across-our-cosmic-neighborhood",
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