English

WISE J072003.20-084651.2B Is A Massive T Dwarf

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2019-10-16 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

We present individual dynamical masses for the nearby M9.5+T5.5 binary WISE J072003.20-084651.2AB, a.k.a. Scholz's star. Combining high-precision CFHT/WIRCam photocenter astrometry and Keck adaptive optics resolved imaging, we measure the first high-quality parallactic distance (6.800.06+0.056.80_{-0.06}^{+0.05} pc) and orbit (8.060.25+0.248.06_{-0.25}^{+0.24} yr period) for this system composed of a low-mass star and brown dwarf. We find a moderately eccentric orbit (e=0.2400.010+0.009e = 0.240_{-0.010}^{+0.009}), incompatible with previous work based on less data, and dynamical masses of 99±699\pm6 MJupM_{\rm Jup} and 66±466\pm4 MJupM_{\rm Jup} for the two components. The primary mass is marginally inconsistent (2.1σ\sigma) with the empirical mass-magnitude-metallicity relation and models of main-sequence stars. The relatively high mass of the cold (Teff=1250±40T_{\rm eff} = 1250\pm40 K) brown dwarf companion indicates an age older than a few Gyr, in accord with age estimates for the primary star, and is consistent with our recent estimate of \approx70 MJupM_{\rm Jup} for the stellar/substellar boundary among the field population. Our improved parallax and proper motion, as well as an orbit-corrected system velocity, improve the accuracy of the system's close encounter with the solar system by an order of magnitude. WISE J0720-0846AB passed within 68.7±2.068.7\pm2.0 kAU of the Sun 80.5±0.780.5\pm0.7 kyr ago, passing through the outer Oort cloud where comets can have stable orbits.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.06994,
  title  = {WISE J072003.20-084651.2B Is A Massive T Dwarf},
  author = {Trent J. Dupuy and Michael C. Liu and William M. J. Best and Andrew W. Mann and Michael A. Tucker and Zhoujian Zhang and Isabelle Baraffe and Gilles Chabrier and Thierry Forveille and Stanimir A. Metchev and Pascal Tremblin and Aaron Do and Anna V. Payne and B. J. Shappee and Charlotte Z. Bond and Sylvain Cetre and Mark Chun and Jacques-Robert Delorme and Nemanja Jovanovic and Scott Lilley and Dimitri Mawet and Sam Ragland and Ed Wetherell and Peter Wizinowich},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.06994},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

accepted to AJ

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:51:24.943Z