Chasing Storms in Brown Dwarfs with NASA’s TESS Exoplanet Hunter Telescope

Astronomers led by the University of Arizona used NASA’s TESS space telescope to explore atmospheric circulation and the distribution of clouds in the closest brown dwarfs, the Luhman 16AB system. They found that brown dwarfs appear strikingly similar to Jupiter, with large bands around the equator and smaller storms near the poles. This video is based on the study published in Apai, Nardiello, and Bedin (2021) Astrophysical Journal.