Clouds on nearby brown dwarf mapped

Technique that revealed failed star’s weather could do the same for exoplanets

CLOUD COVER  Cloudy (dark) and clear (yellow) patches persist on the brown dwarf Luhman 16B as it rotates. Images show the failed star’s cloud layer in infrared wavelengths at roughly 48-minute intervals. 

I. Crossfield/European Southern Observatory

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One of the first maps of clouds on an object outside the solar system appears in the Jan.