Astronomers from the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Manoa and elsewhere have observed the Taurus star-forming region, which resulted in the discovery of planetary-mass and stellar companions of two ultracool dwarf stars. The new finding was presented in a paper published December 4 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Taurus molecular cloud (TMC-1) is an interstellar molecular cloud hosting a stellar nursery, which contains hundreds of newly formed stars. Given that TMC-1 is located only 430 light years away from Earth, it is possibly the nearest large region of star formation.

The relatively young age of this region, estimated to be some 1–5 million years old, makes it an excellent window for astronomers into the earliest stages of wide-orbit planet and brown dwarf formation.