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TOPIC: Brown Dwarfs


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RE: Brown Dwarfs
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Title: A Spitzer Search For Planetary-Mass Brown Dwarfs With Circumstellar Disks: Candidate Selection
Authors: Paul M. Harvey, Daniel T. Jaffe, Katelyn Allers, Michael Liu

We report on initial results from a Spitzer program to search for very low-mass brown dwarfs in Ophiuchus. This program is an extension of an earlier study by Allers et al. which had resulted in an extraordinary success rate, 18 confirmed out of 19 candidates. Their program combined near-infrared and Spitzer photometry to identify objects with very cool photospheres together with circumstellar disk emission to indicate youth. Our new program has obtained deep IRAC photometry of a 0.5 deg2 field that was part of the original Allers et al. study. We report 18 new candidates whose luminosities extend down to 10-4 L\cdot which suggests masses down to ~ 2 MJ if confirmed. We describe our selection techniques, likely contamination issues, and follow-on photometry and spectroscopy that are in progress.

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The Coolest Stars Come Out of the Dark

Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots buried underneath a dark forest floor.
The brown dwarfs join only a handful of similar objects previously discovered. The new objects are between the temperatures of about 450 Kelvin to 600 Kelvin (350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit). As far as stars go, this is bitter cold -- as cold, in some cases, as planets around other stars.
These cool orbs have remained elusive for years, but will soon start coming out of the dark in droves. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which is up scanning the entire sky now in infrared wavelengths, is expected to find hundreds of objects of a similarly chilly disposition, if not even colder. WISE is searching a volume of space 40 times larger than that sampled in the recent Spitzer study, which concentrated on a region in the constellation Bootes. The Spitzer mission is designed to look at targeted patches of sky in detail, while WISE is combing the whole sky.

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Posts: 131433
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Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots buried underneath a dark forest floor.
The brown dwarfs join only a handful of similar objects previously discovered. The new objects are between the temperatures of about 450 Kelvin to 600 Kelvin (350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit). As far as stars go, this is bitter cold -- as cold, in some cases, as planets around other stars.

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Young Brown Dwarfs
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Title: Physical Properties of Young Brown Dwarfs and Very Low-Mass Stars Inferred from High-Resolution Model Spectra
Authors: Emily L. Rice, T. Barman, Ian S. McLean, L. Prato, J. Davy Kirkpatrick

By comparing near-infrared spectra with atmosphere models, we infer the effective temperature, surface gravity, projected rotational velocity, and radial velocity for 21 very-low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. The unique sample consists of two sequences in spectral type from M6-M9, one of 5-10 Myr objects and one of >1 Gyr field objects. A third sequence is comprised of only ~M6 objects with ages ranging from <1 Myr to >1 Gyr. Spectra were obtained in the J band at medium (R~2,000) and high (R~20,000) resolutions with NIRSPEC on the Keck II telescope. Synthetic spectra were generated from atmospheric structures calculated with the PHOENIX model atmosphere code. Using multi-dimensional least-squares fitting and Monte Carlo routines we determine the best-fit model parameters for each observed spectrum and note which spectral regions provide consistent results. We identify successes in the reproduction of observed features by atmospheric models, including pressure-broadened KI lines, and investigate deficiencies in the models, particularly missing FeH opacity, that will need to be addressed in order to extend our analysis to cooler objects. The precision that can be obtained for each parameter using medium- and high- resolution near-infrared spectra is estimated and the implications for future studies of very low mass stars and brown dwarfs are discussed.

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Brown Dwarfs
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Title: Near-Infrared Light Curves of the Brown Dwarf Eclipsing Binary 2MASS J05352184-0546085: Can Spots Explain the Temperature Reversal?
Authors: Y. Gómez Maqueo Chew (1), K. G. Stassun (1), A. Prsa (2 and 3), R. D. Mathieu (4) ((1) Vanderbilt University, (2) Villanova University, (3) University of Ljubljana, (4) University of Wisconsin at Madison)

We present the JHKs light curves for the double-lined eclipsing binary 2MASS J05352184-0546085, in which both components are brown dwarfs. We analyse these light curves with the published Ic-band light curve and radial velocities to provide refined measurements of the system's physical parameters. The component masses and radii are here determined with an accuracy of 2% and 1%, respectively. We confirm the previous surprising finding that the primary brown dwarf has a cooler effective temperature than its companion. Next, we perform a detailed study of the variations in the out-of-eclipse phases of the light curves to ascertain the properties of any inhomogeneities on the surfaces of the brown dwarfs. Our analysis reveals two low-amplitude periodic signals, one attributable to the rotation of the primary (with a period of 3.293±0.001 d) and the other to that of the secondary (14.05±0.05 d). Finally, we explore the effects on the derived physical parameters of the system when spots are included in the modelling. The observed low-amplitude rotational modulations are well fit by cool spots covering a small fraction of their surfaces. To mimic the observed ~200 K suppression of the primary's temperature, our model requires that the primary possess a very large spot coverage fraction of ~65%. Altogether, a spot configuration in which the primary is heavily spotted while the secondary is lightly spotted can explain the apparent temperature reversal and can bring the temperatures of the brown dwarfs into agreement with the predictions of theoretical models.

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Title: The Extreme Microlensing Event OGLE-2007-BLG-224: Terrestrial Parallax Observation of a Thick-Disk Brown Dwarf
Authors: A. Gould (Ohio State), A. Udalski (Warsaw Univ. Obs.), B. Monard (Bronberg Obs.), K. Horne (St. Andrews), Subo Dong (Ohio State), N.Miyake (Nagoya), K. Sahu (STScI), D.P. Bennett (Notre Dame), the OGLE Collaboration, MicroFUN Collaboration, RoboNet Collaboration, MOA collaboration (65 authors)

Parallax is the most fundamental technique to measure distances to astronomical objects. Although terrestrial parallax was pioneered over 2000 years ago by Hipparchus (ca. 140 BCE) to measure the distance to the Moon, the baseline of the Earth is so small that terrestrial parallax can generally only be applied to objects in the Solar System. However, there exists a class of extreme gravitational microlensing events in which the effects of terrestrial parallax can be readily detected and so permit the measurement of the distance, mass, and transverse velocity of the lens. Here we report observations of the first such extreme microlensing event OGLE-2007-BLG-224, from which we infer that the lens is a brown dwarf of mass M=0.056 ± 0.004 Solar masses, with a distance of 525 ± 40 pc and a transverse velocity of 113 ± 21 km/s. The velocity places the lens in the thick disk, making this the lowest-mass thick-disk brown dwarf detected so far. Follow-up observations may allow one to observe the light from the brown dwarf itself, thus serving as an important constraint for evolutionary models of these objects and potentially opening a new window on sub-stellar objects. The low a priori probability of detecting a thick-disk brown dwarf in this event, when combined with additional evidence from other observations, suggests that old substellar objects may be more common than previously assumed.

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Brown dwarfs, objects that are less massive than stars but larger than planets, just got more elusive, based on a study of 233 nearby multiple-star systems by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble found only two brown dwarfs as companions to normal stars. This means the so-called "brown dwarf desert" (the absence of brown dwarfs around solar-type stars) extends to the smallest stars in the universe.

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Brown dwarfs, objects that are less massive than stars but larger than planets, just got more elusive, based on a study of 233 nearby multiple-star systems by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble found only two brown dwarfs as companions to normal stars. This means the so-called 'brown dwarf desert' (the absence of brown dwarfs around solar-type stars) extends to the smallest stars in the Universe.
Sergio Dieterich of Georgia State University in Atlanta and team leader of the study is reporting the results today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Long Beach, California.

'We still did not find brown dwarfs around small red stars whose mass is only slightly above the hydrogen burning limit. Especially when we consider the fact that brown dwarfs binaries do exist, the fact that there are very few binaries whose components lie on different sides of the hydrogen burning limit is significant' - Sergio Dieterich.

The 233 stars surveyed are part of the RECONS (Research Consortium on Nearby Stars) survey meant to understand the nature of the sun's nearest stellar neighbours, both individually and as a population. The current primary goals are to discover and characterise 'missing' members of the sample of stars within 32.6 light-years (10 parsecs) of Earth.
RECONS searches for nearby stars through analysing existing all-sky surveys, combined with observations by a variety of telescopes in both hemispheres. A total of 12 brown dwarfs are currently known within 32.6 light-years of Earth, as compared to 239 red dwarf stars (stars that are largely 20 percent the mass of our sun and are roughly half its diameter and temperature).

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Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars. Using the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as ISO-Oph 102. Such molecular outflows typically are seen coming from young stars or protostars. However, this object has an estimated mass of 60 Jupiters, meaning it is too small to be a star. Astronomers have classified it as a brown dwarf.
Brown dwarfs are on the dividing line between planets and stars, and generally have masses between 15 and 75 Jupiters. (The theoretical minimum mass for a star to sustain nuclear fusion is 75 times Jupiter.) As a result, brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars. However, it is not clear whether they form like stars, from the gravitational collapse of gas clouds, or if they form like planets, agglomerating rocky material until they grow massive enough to draw in nearby gas.

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Title: Fundamental Properties of Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs
Authors: Michael C. Liu (IfA/Hawaii), Keivan G. Stassun (Vanderbilt), France Allard (CRAL/Lyon), Cullen H. Blake (CfA/Harvard), M. Bonnefoy (LAOG/Grenoble), Ann Marie Cody (Caltech), A. C. Day-Jones (Hertfordshire), Trent J. Dupuy (IfA/Hawaii), Adam Kraus (Caltech), Mercedes Lopez-Morales (DTM/Carnegie)

Precise measurements of the fundamental properties of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are key to understanding the physics underlying their formation and evolution. While there has been great progress over the last decade in studying the bulk spectrophotometric properties of low-mass objects, direct determination of their masses, radii, and temperatures have been very sparse. Thus, theoretical predictions of low-mass evolution and ultracool atmospheres remain to be rigorously tested. The situation is alarming given that such models are widely used, from the determination of the low-mass end of the initial mass function to the characterisation of exoplanets. An increasing number of mass, radius, and age determinations are placing critical constraints on the physics of low-mass objects. A wide variety of approaches are being pursued, including eclipsing binary studies, astrometric-spectroscopic orbital solutions, interferometry, and characterisation of benchmark systems. In parallel, many more systems suitable for concerted study are now being found, thanks to new capabilities spanning both the very widest (all-sky surveys) and very narrowest (diffraction-limited adaptive optics) areas of the sky. This Cool Stars 15 splinter session highlighted the current successes and limitations of this rapidly growing area of precision astrophysics.

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