Does anybody kne what's the difference in between white dwarfs, red dwarfs, brown dwarfs and all the other dwarfs out in space? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------------------ Never believe anything until it has officially denied.
A brown dwarf is in essence a star which did not have enough mass to ingite hydrogen fusion in its nucleous. It is very similar to our giant planets but it only has more mass something like 20 times the mass of Jupiter. It is called brown because of residual heat that it rediates from when it was formed, just like Jupiter and Saturn also emit more energy then they receive from the sun. White dwarfs is the end stage of a main class star (like our sun) when it has burned up all its hydrogen and doesn't have enough mass to begin buring helium. All stars with masses smaller then 1.4 solar masses eventually end up in this fase. So essentially a white dwarf is a previous star that is cooling down en emitting its last heat. After a while its white color will turn to red, then we speak of a red dwarf which is actually the same thing as a white dwarf but only older. There is a huge difference in composition between a white/red dwarf and a brown dwarf. A brown dwarf is nothing more then an oversized planet however a white dwarf has degenerate matter. This means that because of its high gravitation its atoms are broken and the nucleii and the electrons are warped into a quantum soup, a mix in which no normal matter can exist. ------------------ I err, therefore I exist !
So...could you see a brown dwarf thru a telescope or is that just a description of something that is probably out there?
Found the answer to my own question at the following website...check it out. http://hubble.stsci.edu/news_.and._views/cat.cgi?stars
I always thought a Red Dwarf was a British sci-fi comedy series. I know, I know. I'll go back to bed. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! [This message has been edited by Oxygen (edited September 14, 2000).]
