Related papers: Could the planets around HR 8799 be brown dwarfs?
HR 8799 hosts four directly imaged giant planets, but none has a mass measured from first principles. We present the first dynamical mass measurement in this planetary system, finding that the innermost planet HR~8799~e has a mass of…
We report evidence for a planetary companion around the nearby young star HD 70573. The star is a G type dwarf located at a distance of 46 pc with age estimation between 20 and 300 Myrs. We carried out spectroscopic observations of this…
Context. Detecting and characterizing substellar companions for which the luminosity, mass, and age can be determined independently is of utter importance to test and calibrate the evolutionary models due to uncertainties in their formation…
The mass and age of substellar objects are degenerate parameters leaving the evolutionary state of brown dwarfs ambiguous without additional information. Theoretical models are normally used to help distinguish between old, massive brown…
Aims. The project aims to understand better the role of wide brown dwarf companions on planetary systems. Methods. We obtained high-resolution spectra of six bright stars with co-moving wide substellar companions with the SONG, CARMENES,…
The brown dwarf desert describes a range of orbital periods (<5 years) in which fewer brown dwarf-mass companions have been observed around Sun-like stars, when compared to planets and low mass stellar companions. It is therefore theorised…
By definition, brown dwarfs never reach the main-sequence, cooling and dimming over their entire lifetime, thus making substellar models challenging to test because of the strong dependence on age. Currently, most brown dwarfs with…
We aim to reveal the nature of the reddest known substellar companion HD 206893 B by studying its near-infrared colors and spectral morphology and by investigating its orbital motion. We fit atmospheric models for giant planets and brown…
Owing to their similarities with giant exoplanets, brown dwarf companions of stars provide insights into the fundamental processes of planet formation and evolution. From their orbits, several brown dwarf companions are found to be more…
We present here the detection of a brown dwarf orbiting the A9V star HD180777. The radial velocity measurements, obtained with the ELODIE echelle spectrograph at the Haute-Provence Observatory, show a main variation with a period of 28.4…
The tidal evolution of planets orbiting brown dwarfs (BDs) presents an interesting case study because BDs' terrestrial planet forming region is located extremely close-in. In fact, the habitable zones of BDs range from roughly 0.001 to 0.03…
Brown dwarfs straddle the mass range transition from planetary to stellar objects. There is a relative paucity of brown dwarfs companions around FGKM stars compared to exoplanets for orbital periods less than a few years, but most of the…
We present photometric, astrometric and spectroscopic observations of the nearby (9.8 pc) low-mass binary Gl 569Bab (in turn being a companion to the early-M star Gl 569A), made with the Keck adaptive optics facility. Having observed Gl…
Sun-like stars have stellar, brown dwarf and planetary companions. To help constrain their formation and migration scenarios, we analyse the close companions (orbital period < 5 years) of nearby Sun-like stars. By using the same sample to…
The study of high contrast imaged brown dwarfs and exoplanets depends strongly on evolutionary models. To estimate the mass of a directly imaged substellar object, its extracted photometry or spectrum is used and adjusted with model spectra…
While brown dwarfs show similarities with stars in their early life, their spin evolution is much more akin to that of planets. We have used lightcurves from the K2 mission to measure new rotation periods for 18 young brown dwarfs in the…
Surveys of young star-forming regions have discovered a growing population of planetary-mass (<13 M_Jup) companions around young stars. There is an ongoing debate as to whether these companions formed like planets (that is, from the…
Previous work has demonstrated orbital stability for 100 Myr of initially near-circular and coplanar small bodies in a region termed the 'Earth-Mars belt' from 1.08 au $< a <$ 1.28 au. Via numerical integration of 3000 particles, we studied…
Up to now, most planet search projects have concentrated on F to K stars. In order to considerably widen the view, we have stated a survey for planets of old, nearby brown dwarfs and very low mass stars. Using UVES, we have observed 26…
The Stellar Planet Survey is an ongoing astrometric search for giant planets and brown dwarfs around a sample of about 30 M-dwarfs. We have discovered several low-mass companions by measuring the motion of our target stars relative to their…