Эрдэмтэд SIMP 0136 хэмээх бор одой одны агаар мандалд тогтмол давтагддаг цаг агаарын гурван хэв шинжийг анх удаа тодорхойлжээ.
Дэлхийгээс 20 гэрлийн жилийн зайд орших SIMP 0136 нь хийн аварга гаригуудаас илүү том бөгөөд халуун, харин од шиг устөрөгчийн нэгдэл явуулах хэмжээний массгүй биет юм. Астрономичид энэхүү биетийг шууд харах боломжгүй тул Жэймс Вэбб сансрын дуран авайгаар дамжуулан гэрэлтэлтийн өөрчлөлтийг хэмжих замаар агаар мандлын үйл явцыг судалжээ. Судалгаагаар тус биетийн эргэлтийн явцад үүлний зузаан болон температурын өөрчлөлтөөс хамаарсан цаг агаарын гурван үндсэн төлөв тогтмол давтагддаг болохыг тогтоосон байна.
Судлаачид “Үндсэн бүрэлдэхүүний шинжилгээ” (PCA) хэмээх аргыг ашиглан агаар мандлын өгөгдлөөс температурын хэлбэлзэл болон үүлний босоо бүтэц гэсэн хоёр гол хүчин зүйлийг ялгаж авчээ. Энэхүү арга нь нарийн төвөгтэй загварчлал хийхээс өмнө агаар мандлын гол шинж чанарыг хурдан тодорхойлох боломжийг олгодог. Шинжилгээгээр эдгээр цаг агаарын хэв шинж нь агаар мандлын нарийвчилсан дүр зураг өөрчлөгдсөн ч арав гаруй эргэлтийн туршид тогтвортой үргэлжилж байгааг илрүүлжээ.
Тринити коллежийн эрдэмтэн Мөрл Шрадер тэргүүтэй багийн үзэж байгаагаар, энэхүү ололт нь ирээдүйн сансрын ажиглалтын өгөгдлийг шинжлэх арга барилыг өөрчлөх юм. Хэдийгээр тус биет нь ганц цэг мэт харагддаг ч ийнхүү цаг агаарын нарийн төлөвийг илрүүлсэн нь одон орон судлалын салбарт чухал ач холбогдолтой байна. Энэхүү судалгааны үр дүн нь Astronomy & Astrophysics сэтгүүлд нийтлэгджээ.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
A world 20 light-years from Earth has weather that is far more organized than it first appears. Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists have discovered three recurring weather patterns on SIMP 0136, a brown dwarf whose atmosphere is constantly changing.
Behind all that activity, just two main processes seem to be at work. SIMP 0136 is an unusual object, bigger and hotter than a gas giant planet but not massive enough to power itself through hydrogen fusion like a star.
The world’s atmosphere is filled with enormous cloud systems that shift as the object rotates. From Earth, astronomers cannot actually see those clouds. Instead, they study tiny changes in brightness to work out what is happening in the atmosphere. And those changes have revealed something interesting.
Three Weather Patterns Keep Coming Back
The atmosphere of SIMP 0136 may look chaotic, but its weather follows a surprisingly consistent pattern. Researchers identified three recurring atmospheric states, each linked to different combinations of temperature and cloud thickness.
Some regions are hotter, with thinner clouds. Others are cooler, with thicker clouds stretching through more of the atmosphere. As the brown dwarf spins, these different regions move into view, changing the amount of light that reaches Webb. What caught the researchers’ attention was how long these patterns lasted. The same underlying weather processes remained visible across more than a dozen rotations, even as individual cloud systems continued to change.
“We also discovered that these drivers of the weather patterns on SIMP-0136 persist over time, even as the detailed appearance of the atmosphere evolves over more than a dozen rotations,” said Merle Schrader, a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin and the study’s lead author.
What Drives SIMP 0136’s Strange Weather?
To make sense of the observations, the team turned to a technique called principal component analysis (PCA). It sounds complicated, but the idea is fairly straightforward: find the strongest patterns in a large amount of data and separate them from the smaller fluctuations.
By studying how this world’s brightness changed across different wavelengths, the researchers identified two main drivers: temperature variations and changes in the vertical structure of clouds. The method also helped separate weaker signals from random noise, giving scientists a clearer picture of the world’s atmosphere.
As described in Astronomy & Astrophysics report, this approach works differently from traditional atmospheric studies. Instead of building a detailed model first, researchers can identify the main patterns directly from the observations.
SIMP 0136 was a good place to test the technique. Its relative proximity makes it easier to collect high-quality data, and previous studies provided useful results for comparison. For Schrader and her colleagues, the analysis helped explain how different weather patterns can exist together and interact over time.
A Distant World’s Weather In One Pixel
SIMP 0136 is around 20 light-years away, meaning the light Webb captured in 2023 had been traveling through space for roughly two decades. It left the brown dwarf around the same year Schrader was born.
“Light travels at around 300,000 km/s but, even at that speed, it took two decades to reach us,” he explained.
For comparison, light takes just over a second to travel from Earth to the Moon. And yet, from that enormous distance, scientists have managed to identify recurring weather patterns on an object that appears as essentially a single pixel spread across different wavelengths. Professor Johanna Vos, an associate professor at Trinity College Dublin, explained that:
“Our findings will transform how astronomers analyze future JWST observations. Since our approach rapidly identifies the dominant components of the atmosphere, it offers an efficient first step before we begin computationally intensive modeling.”
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