Western University Investigator Leads Team in New Brown Dwarfs Finding

Western University’s Stanimir Metchev is the principal investigator of new findings on brown dwarfs which were presented at a news conference today at the 223rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington.

Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New 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.”

“As the brown dwarfs spin on their axis, the alternation of what we think are cloud-free and cloudy regions produces a periodic brightness variation that we can observe,” said Stanimir Metchev of Western University, Canada. “These are signs of patchiness in the cloud cover.”
Metchev joined Western’s Faculty of Science and Department of Physics and Astronomy in July 2013.

The complete text of today’s news release is available here:
Spitzer Probes Weather on Brown Dwarfs