Shining Too Bright: Testing Brown Dwarf Models with HD 4747 B and HD 19467 B

Wood and collaborators studied two brown dwarfs, HD 4747 B and HD 19467 B, using precise age estimates from their host stars. They found that current substellar evolutionary models under-predict the brown dwarfs’ brightness and overestimate their masses. Including atmospheric effects like clouds improves the match but doesn’t fully resolve the discrepancy, suggesting missing physics such as metallicity effects.