Within 20 pc of the Sun, there are currently 29 known cold brown dwarfs—sources with measured distances and an estimated effective temperature between that of Jupiter (170 K) and approximately 500 K (ref. 1). These sources are almost all isolated and are the closest laboratories we have for detailed atmospheric studies of giant planets formed

Collisional impacts between asteroid-sized objects have been common throughout the history of our solar system and have significantly contributed to the formation of asteroid families (Nesvorný et al., 2015). Of particular interest are the low-albedo (geometric albedo < 0.10) and low-inclination (i ≤ 15°) asteroid families situated within the inner

An important aspect of characterizing exoplanets is getting reliable information about structures on their surfaces. Resolving exoplanet surfaces might seem like an impossible challenge. Given that no resolved direct images of exoplanet surfaces exist, this skepticism is understandable. Terrestrial exoplanets are small, distant, and difficult to

The intense stellar irradiation of ultra-hot Jupiters results in some of the most extreme atmospheric environments in the planetary regime. On their daysides, temperatures can be sufficiently high for key atmospheric constituents to thermally dissociate into simpler molecular species and atoms. This dissociation drastically changes the atmospheric