1. A gaseous body smaller in mass than a star, but larger than a planet.
2. An object less massive than a star, but heavier than a planet.

Brown dwarfs do not have enough mass to ignite nuclear reactions at their centers, but shine by heat released during their contraction from a gas cloud.

Some astronomers believe that vast numbers of brown dwarfs exist throughout the galaxy, but because of the difficulty in detecting them, none of them were detected until 1995, when U.S. astronomers discovered a brown dwarf, in the constellation Lepus (Hare).