In space, there are objects that are born like stars, but they do not have enough mass to ignite the fuel that makes stars shine continuously, so they appear as worlds lost in darkness, called brown dwarfs.
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However, NASA 's SPHEREx space telescope has begun to reveal that their atmospheres are far more diverse than their pale appearance suggests. Scientists have read the signatures of water, methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide in the light of dozens of brown dwarfs, finding chemical variations that current models cannot fully explain.
NASA announced the findings on October 8, 2026, based on a study published in The Astrophysical Journal. The team analyzed observations of 37 near-Earth objects, a significant increase from the few dozen previously studied examples in detailed space-based research. The result represents the beginning of a broader survey of thousands of objects, not the first discovery of these particles in brown dwarfs.
Brown dwarfs were first identified in the 1990s. Like stars, they form from the collapse of gas clouds under gravity, but their mass is insufficient to sustain hydrogen fusion in their cores. Therefore, they gradually cool and radiate most of their energy in infrared radiation. Some brown dwarfs have atmospheres similar to Jupiter, despite their different formation processes.
The sample included objects with temperatures ranging from approximately 2,200 degrees Celsius to -20 degrees Celsius. Zafer Rustamkulov, the lead researcher at the Center for Infrared Processing and Analysis at Caltech, said that the observations reveal changes in molecular signatures across this wide temperature range, allowing for comparisons of shells that appear superficially similar but differ in details.
Weather that models don't understand
The data reveals an intriguing phase when some brown dwarfs cool down, their cloud cover thins, and traces of methane become more apparent in their atmospheres. However, comparing the observed spectra with five theoretical models showed difficulty in matching all the light characteristics, particularly the signals associated with carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, and during the cloud change phase.
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