* Astronomy

Title: Discovery of a nearby M9 dwarf: DENIS 0334-49
Authors: N. Phan-Bao, M.S. Bessell, E.L. Martin, G. Simon, J. Guibert, T. Forveille, X. Delfosse, F. Crifo, N. Epchtein, P. Wood, F. Tajahmady

Researchers have reported the discovery of a new M9.0 dwarf star only 22.8 light years away, which they identified in by a search for nearby ultracool dwarf (I-J less than 3.0, later than M8.0) in the DENIS database.
They measure a very high proper motion of 2.5 arc-sec/year.
The PC3 index measured from its low-resolution spectrum gives a spectrophotometric distance of 7 pc. This makes it the third closest M9.0 dwarf.


Archival images of DENIS 0334-49: SERC-I (left, epoch: 1984.915) and DENIS-I (right, epoch: 1996.937). The size of each image is 3.2′×3.2′, and North is up and East to the left.



Spectrum of DENIS 0334-49 and VB10. The positions of the Hα, NaI, KI and CaII lines are indicated, as well as the spectral intervals used to compute the TiO5, and PC3 indices. The FeH absorption features from 985 to 1020 nm are also indicated.


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