We report the discovery of a population of late-M and L field dwarfs with unusual optical and near-infrared spectral features that we attribute to low gravity -- likely uncommonly young, low-mass brown dwarfs. Many of these new-found young objects have southerly declinations and distance estimates within 60 parsecs. Intriguingly, these are the same properties of recently discovered, nearby, intermediate-age (5-50 Myr), loose associations such as Tucana/Horologium, the TW Hydrae association, and the Beta Pictoris moving group. We describe our efforts to confirm cluster membership and to further investigate this possible new young population of brown dwarfs.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0702034,
title = {A New Population of Young Brown Dwarfs},
author = {Kelle L. Cruz and J. Davy Kirkpatrick and Adam J. Burgasser and Dagny Looper and Subhanjoy Mohanty and Lisa Prato and Jackie Faherty and Adam Solomon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0702034},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
5 pages, contribution to proceedings for the 14th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun, 6-10 November 2006