Webb discovers brown dwarfs twice Jupiter's mass in IC 348
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers discovered brown dwarfs in the star-forming region IC 348 with masses as low as twice Jupiter's mass (0.19% of the Sun's mass), the least massive brown dwarfs known to date. The research team used Webb's NIRCam in 2024 to identify candidate brown dwarfs, then followed up with NIRSpec in 2025 to conduct spectroscopic observations. The observations revealed one of the lightest brown dwarfs showed signs of a disc, suggesting planets could be forming around it. The team also detected hydrocarbons in the atmospheres of the lowest-mass brown dwarfs, a feature previously seen only in such extreme objects.