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Iron, silicate and sulfide clouds

Main-sequence stars cool, but eventually reach a minimum bolometric luminosity that they can sustain through steady fusion. This luminosity varies from star to star, but is generally at least 0.01% that of the Sun. Brown dwarfs cool and darken steadily over their lifetimes; sufficiently old brown dwarfs will be too faint to be detectable.

Clouds are used to explain the weakening of the iron hydride (FeH) spectral line in late L-dwarfs. Iron clouds deplete FeH in the upper atmosphere, and the cloud layer blocks the view to lower layers still containing FeH. The later strengthening of this chemical compound at cooler temperatures of mid- to late T-dwarfs is explained by disturbed clouds that allows a telescope to look into the deeper layers of the atmosphere that still contains FeH. Young L/T-dwarfs (L2-T4) show high variability, which could be explained with clouds, hot spots, magnetically driven aurorae or thermochemical instabilities. The clouds of these brown dwarfs are explained as either iron clouds with varying thickness or a lower thick iron cloud layer and an upper silicate cloud layer. This upper silicate cloud layer can consist out of quartz, enstatite, corundum and/or fosterite. It is however not clear if silicate clouds are always necessary for young objects. Silicate absorption can be directly observed in the mid-infrared at 8 to 12 μm. Observations with Spitzer IRS have shown that silicate absorption is common, but not ubiquitous, for L2-L8 dwarfs. Additionally, MIRI has observed silicate absorption in the planetary-mass companion VHS 1256b.

Iron rain as part of atmospheric convection processes is possible only in brown dwarfs, and not in small stars. The spectroscopy research into iron rain is still ongoing, but not all brown dwarfs will always have this atmospheric anomaly. In 2013, a heterogeneous iron-containing atmosphere was imaged around the B component in the nearby Luhman 16 system.

For late T-type brown dwarfs only a few variable searches were carried out. Thin cloud layers are predicted to form in late T-dwarfs from chromium and potassium chloride, as well as several sulfides. These sulfides are manganese sulfide, sodium sulfide and zinc sulfide. The variable T7 dwarf 2M0050–3322 is explained to have a top layer of potassium chloride clouds, a mid layer of sodium sulfide clouds and a lower layer of manganese sulfide clouds. Patchy clouds of the top two cloud layers could explain why the methane and water vapor bands are variable.

At the lowest temperatures of the Y-dwarf WISE 0855-0714 patchy cloud layers of sulfide and water ice clouds could cover 50% of the surface.