Dynamical Mass of GJ 802B: a brown dwarf in a triple system
Astrophysics
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
We report a dynamical measurement of the mass of the brown dwarf GJ 802B using aperture-masking interferometry and astrometry. In addition, we report the discovery that GJ 802A is itself a close spectroscopic non-eclipsing binary with a 19 hour period. We find the mass of GJ 802B to be M. GJ 802 has kinematics inconsistent with a young star and more consistent with the thick disk population, implying a system age of 10 GYr. However, model evolutionary tracks for GJ 802B predict system ages of 2 GYr, suggesting that brown dwarf evolutionary models may be underestimating luminosity for old brown dwarfs.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.1525,
title = {Dynamical Mass of GJ 802B: a brown dwarf in a triple system},
author = {M. J. Ireland and A. Kraus and F. Martinache and J. P. Lloyd and P. G. Tuthill},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.1525},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures, accepted for ApJ