A team of astronomers has discovered thanks to infrared images of the Orion Nebula the unexpected presence of a "swarm" of low-mass objects, raising new questions about the history of their star formation.
As explained by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a statement, thanks to the HAWK-I instrument installed on the VLT (Very Large Telescope) telescope in Chile, has been able to "dive" deep in the heart of the Orion Nebula as he had ever done.
The images show about ten times more brown dwarfs and isolated planetary mass objects of known so far in the nebula.
This suggests that Orion may be forming, in proportion, many more low-mass objects than other regions closer and less active star formation explains ESO.
As Amelia Bayo, a member of the research team, says it is "very important" to understand and know how many low-mass objects are found in Orion to limit current theories of star formation.
"We are now aware that the way these very low mass objects form depends on your environment," he added.
Before this research, published in the journal "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society", most of the objects found were masses of about a quarter of the Sun.
The discovery of new objects with much lower masses suggest that the number of planet-sized objects could be much greater than previously thought.