Gaia will not observe 50000 brown dwarfs, but about 100 times less. However, these <~ 500 brown dwarfs will be benchmarks for many substellar topics. It is possible to identify them in advance and make the list public to all astronomers worldwide through a virtual observatory-compliant "Gaia brown dwarf" catalogue. This M-, L- and T-dwarf Archive of Interest for Astrophysics would tabulate precise Gaia astrometry, multiband photometry, high- and low-resolution spectroscopy and homogeneously derived astrophysical parameters. Spanish observatories may play a key role in the catalogue preparation.
@article{arxiv.1408.2421,
title = {Gaia and brown dwarfs from Spain},
author = {J. A. Caballero},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.2421},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
Proceedings of the GREAT-ESF workshop "Gaia and the unseen - the brown dwarf question", Torino, 24-26 March 2014, to be published in Memorie della Societa' Astronomica Italiana (SAIt), eds. Ricky Smart, David Barrado, Jackie Faherty