Brown dwarfs: At last filling the gap between stars and planets

Brown dwarfs: At last filling the gap between stars and planets

Ben Zuckerman*

Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Abstract

Until the mid-1990s a person could not point to any celestial object and say with assurance that “here is a brown dwarf.” Now dozens are known, and the study of brown dwarfs has come of age, touching upon major issues in astrophysics, including the nature of dark matter, the properties of substellar objects, and the origin of binary stars and planetary systems.

Footnotes

↵ * To whom reprint requests should be addressed at: Department of Astronomy, Math Sciences Bldg. 8371, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095. E-mail: ben{at}astro.ucla.edu.
Copyright © 2000, The National Academy of Sciences