Space
Webb finds the lightest known brown dwarfs
A huge new Webb image of IC 348 shows “failed stars” with only twice the mass of Jupiter.
On September 15, 2026, the European Space Agency and NASA released a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows IC 348, a region where new stars are being born, and it is one of the largest Webb images ever released to the public. Searching this region, astronomers found the lightest brown dwarfs known so far, with just twice the mass of Jupiter.
IC 348 lies about 1,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Perseus. In regions like this, cold clouds of hydrogen gas collapse and form new stars.
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The amount of matter in an object. Scientists often compare the masses of stars and planets.
Some of the brown dwarfs have only twice the mass of Jupiter.