What are substellar objects?

Substellar objects are big space rocks that aren’t quite big enough to be stars.

Imagine you're playing with your toy cars, some of them are just regular cars, but others are super heavy and can even light up the room. Substellar objects are like those not-so-light-up cars, they’re too small to become bright, shining stars, but still pretty cool in their own right.

Substellar objects include things like brown dwarfs and planets. Think of brown dwarfs as the "middle kids" between stars and planets, they're not quite big enough to shine like stars, but they’re bigger than most planets you know.

Planets are more familiar, Earth is a planet! They orbit stars just like your toy car orbits around you when you move it in circles. Substellar objects can also have their own moons or even be covered in clouds and storms, just like Earth.

So next time you look up at the night sky, remember, there are some amazing big space rocks out there, waiting to be discovered!