English

A New Parallax Measurement for the Coldest Known Brown Dwarf

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-06-22 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 was recently discovered as the coldest known brown dwarf based on four epochs of images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope. We have improved the accuracy of its parallax measurement by obtaining two additional epochs of Spitzer astrometry. We derive a parallactic distance of 2.31+/-0.08 pc, which continues to support its rank as the fourth closest known system to the Sun when compared to WISE J104915.57-531906.1 AB (2.02+/-0.02 pc) and Wolf 359 (2.386+/-0.012 pc). The new constraint on the absolute magnitude at 4.5um indicates an effective temperature of 235-260 K based on four sets of theoretical models. We also show the updated positions of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 in two color-magnitude diagrams. Whereas Faherty and coworkers cited its location in MW2 versus J-W2 as evidence of water clouds, we find that those data can be explained instead by cloudless models that employ non-equilibrium chemistry.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.5899,
  title  = {A New Parallax Measurement for the Coldest Known Brown Dwarf},
  author = {K. L. Luhman and T. L. Esplin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.5899},
  year   = {2015}
}

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Astrophysical Journal, in press