Related papers: The Brown Dwarf-Exoplanet Connection
The last few years has seen a dramatic increase in the number of exoplanets known and in the range of methods for characterising their atmospheric properties. At the same time, new discoveries of increasingly cooler brown dwarfs have pushed…
Young brown dwarfs and directly-imaged exoplanets have enticingly similar photometric and spectroscopic characteristics, indicating that their cool, low gravity atmospheres should be studied in concert. Similarities between the peculiar…
The lowest-mass stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets present challenges and opportunities for understanding dynamics and cloud formation processes in low-temperature atmospheres. For brown dwarfs, the formation, variation and rapid…
Brown dwarfs bridge the gap between the stellar and planetary mass regimes. Evolving from conditions very similar to the lowest-mass stars, the atmospheres of older brown dwarfs closely resemble those expected in close-in extrasolar giant…
A planetary atmosphere is the outer gas layer of a planet. Besides its scientific significance among the first and most accessible planetary layers observed from space, it is closely connected with planetary formation and evolution, surface…
Brown dwarfs constitute a missing link between low-mass stars and giant planets. Their atmospheres display chemical species typical of planets, and one could wonder whether they also have weather-like patterns. While brown dwarf surface…
In order to understand the atmospheres as well as the formation mechanism of giant planets formed outside our solar system, the next decade will require an investment in studies of isolated young brown dwarfs. In this white paper we…
The physics of brown dwarfs has continuously improved since the discovery of these astrophysical bodies. The first important developments were devoted to the description of their mechanical structure, with the derivation of an appropriate…
Straddling the traditional realms of the planets and the stars, objects below the edge of the main sequence have such unique properties, and are being discovered in such quantities, that one can rightly claim that a new field at the…
Brown Dwarfs are the coolest class of stellar objects known to date. Our present perception is that Brown Dwarfs follow the principles of star formation, and that Brown Dwarfs share many characteristics with planets. Being the darkest and…
In the last decade, about a dozen giant exoplanets have been directly imaged in the IR as companions to young stars. With photometry and spectroscopy of these planets in hand from new extreme coronagraphic instruments such as SPHERE at VLT…
We review several aspects of the calculation of exoplanet model atmospheres in the current era, with a focus on understanding the temperature-pressure profiles of atmospheres and their emitted spectra. Most of the focus is on gas giant…
The coolest known brown dwarfs are our best analogs to extrasolar gas-giant planets. The prolific detections of such cold substellar objects in the past two years has spurred intensive followup, but the lack of accurate distances is a key…
Brown dwarfs are massive, giant exoplanet analogues subject to variability and colour changes, known as the L/T transition, fundamental for their thermal evolution. The drivers of the L/T transition remain elusive, with atmospheric…
We show that the total habitable volume in the atmospheres of cool brown dwarfs with effective temperatures of $\sim 250$-$350$ K is possibly larger by two orders of magnitude than that of Earth-like planets. We also study the role of…
Observations of brown dwarfs provide important feedback on theories of atmospheres and inner structure of substellar objects. Brown dwarf binary systems furthermore offer the unique opportunity to determine the mass of individual brown…
One of the most debated subjects in Astronomy since the discovery of exoplanets is how can we distinguish the most massive of such objects from very-low mass stars like Brown Dwarfs (BDs)? We have been looking for evidences of a difference…
We review our present understanding of the physical properties of substellar objects, brown dwarfs and irradiated or non-irradiated gaseous exoplanets. This includes a description of their internal properties, mechanical structure and heat…
Ground-based and spacecraft telescopic observations, combined with an intensive modeling effort, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hot giant planets and brown dwarfs over the past ten years. Although these objects are all fluid,…
Clouds seem like an every-day experience. But -- do we know how clouds form on brown dwarfs and extra-solar planets? How do they look like? Can we see them? What are they composed of? Cloud formation is an old-fashioned but still…