A star's formation process can make something barely heavier than Jupiter

Brown dwarfs form from collapsing gas clouds, like stars. But their cores do not get hot enough to sustain the ordinary hydrogen fusion that powers a star.

NASA reports that Webb found brown dwarfs in IC 348 with masses as low as twice Jupiter's—smaller than theory predicts. One shows signs of a disk, suggesting that planets could be forming around an object with a planet-like mass itself.

That is the interesting question behind the pretty picture: how small an object can the star-formation process actually produce?