Enjoyed the article a lot. A question, are brown dwarfs always classified as stars? What is the defining feature of a star? A certain size or having some degree of hydrogen fusion?
Enjoyed the article a lot. A question, are brown dwarfs always classified as stars? What is the defining feature of a star? A certain size or having some degree of hydrogen fusion?
That is a good question and I think there is no well-defined line between the largest planets and smallest stars. It is suspected that some fusion processes are taking place with deuterium (a rare isotope of Hydrogen) but these do not generate enough energy to heat the brown dwarf to anything but a relatively dim glowing red object to the naked eye.
Thanks for the answer. A lot of strange and interesting objects out there in the universe, looking forward to the next article