Brown Dwarf in the Pleiades
Artwork of a brown dwarf in the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) is a young
open cluster of several dozen hot, middle-aged stars. It is about 130 parsecs away in Taurus. In the
1990s, astronomers discovered several brown dwarfs within the cluster, as illustrated in this
picture. Brown dwarfs are objects which form like stars, but which do not fuse hydrogen into helium
like true stars. Some, however, do undergo deuterium burning. They are mid-way in mass between large
planets and small stars.