Irradiated brown dwarfs

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Sarah Casewell
• Thursday 01 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
• Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Jan Scholtz.

Brown dwarfs are often described as failed stars, however the flip side of this description is that they can also be described as over-ambitious planets. With masses between 13-70 Jupiter masses they have cool atmospheres dominated by cloud features, molecules and show features due to weather. These atmospheres have a lot of similarities with atmospheres we see in planets in our solar system, and also directly imaged exoplanets. The question then is: How like hot Jupiters are irradiated brown dwarfs? In this seminar I will describe the known irradiated brown dwarfs and how they evolve into post-common envelope systems containing a white dwarf. These rare binaries have very short periods (~hrs) and the brown dwarf is irradiated by the white dwarf companion, often with large amounts of UV radiation. I will discuss the atmospheres of these highly irradiated brown dwarfs and their similarities with irradiated exoplanets.

This talk is part of the Institute of Astronomy Colloquia series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology lists
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Hoyle Lecture Theatre, Institute of Astronomy
• Institute of Astronomy Colloquia
• Institute of Astronomy Talk Lists
• Kavli Institute for Cosmology Talk Lists
• Priscilla

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.