I’d first heard of brown dwarves in the 1980s—at around the time I first realized the embryonic idea of becoming a science fiction writer. I knew little about brown dwarves at the time; they were still relatively new to astronomical science, and so nobody really knew that much about them. We know a lot more than we did in the 1980s, but there’s still some debate as to what actually differentiates a brown dwarf from either a super-massive Jupiter-like world, or a really tiny, wimpy star. According to contemporary astronomical understanding, a star’s birth is defined initially by the gravitational collapse of a cold, interstellar cloud of gas and dust. As the cloud contracts and compresses, it gets nice and toasty due to the release of gravitational potential energy. At the midway-toasty part of the process, the central pre-stellar mass becomes sufficiently dense to trap radiation. This raises temperatures from pre-toasty, to mid-toasty, and then to burn-your-toast-hot in a relatively short period of time: the heat/density ratios of sufficiently massive condensations trigger thermonuclear reactions in what has become the core of a protostar. For most stars, gas and radiation pressure caused by thermonuclear fusion pushes outward, stabilizing the proto-stellar mass in a condition with the exquisitely technical name of hydrostatic equilibrium. Once hydrostatic equilibrium is achieved, a star will spend most of its lifetime fusing hydrogen into helium as a main sequence star. This doesn’t work for pipsqueaks. If the mass of a protostar is somewhat less than 0.08 solar masses, then normal hydrogen thermonuclear fusion fizzles, sputters, and fails to become impressive. Gravitational contraction doesn’t heat the protostar very well, and so it remains in the pre-toasty range. Before core temperatures can increase enough to trigger fusion, the protostellar density causes the dim, fizzly body to pack electrons closely enough to generate something else with an impressive technical name: quantum electron degeneracy pressure. (Scientists like big names: I guess when they discover something they get paid by the letter when they describe it.) I thought of brown dwarves as I went through yet another crazy day. There are times when astronomical ruminations are the only things that maintain any measure of sanity. Well, in total honesty, it doesn’t take much to make me think of astronomical stuff; as I’m plotting out another story concerning those Nemaean people I occasionally go on and on about, and…well…whenever I think of Nemaeans, astronomy tends to ooze to the forefront of my mind. I’m mid-ooze right now, and for those who know certain Nemaean characters, I suspect that Ilya and Aleo are going to have to spend an entire story getting Dorianna out of trouble. Again. Or maybe they’ve distracted her by showing her lots of pretty stars. Nah…Doranna’s not the sort to fall for that trick. At any rate, I’ve been thinking of substellar objects, super-massive planets, and The Gimp. This image is the result of that, and copious quantities of Dr. Pepper. I don’t know whether the ringed body is just a big, hot, gaseous planet with rings, and one of its many moons in view, or if it’s an actual brown dwarf, with a Pluto-class “dwarf planet” in view. At any rate, here it is and I hope you enjoy it. For those interested in the unfolding tale of Nemaea, rest assured that something will come out of this image, but knowing Nemaea and what it’s turned out to be, it probably won’t be very pretty. It will—most likely—involve a substellar object and a rather gaudy “stellar nursery” exuding quite a large number of hot/young stars (as seen in the background of this largely background image.) As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great, productive and fun week.