Related papers: Ultracool Dwarf Science from Widefield Multi-Epoch…
Context: The local census of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs is crucial to improving our understanding of the stellar-substellar transition and their formation history. These objects, known as ultra-cool dwarfs (UCDs), are essential…
Straddling the traditional realms of the planets and the stars, objects below the edge of the main sequence have such unique properties, and are being discovered in such quantities, that one can rightly claim that a new field at the…
The time domain of the sky has been only sparsely explored. Nevertheless, recent discoveries from limited surveys and serendipitous discoveries indicate that there is much to be found on timescales from nanoseconds to years and at…
Brown dwarf spectra contain a wealth of information about their molecular abundances, temperature structure, and gravity. We present a new data driven retrieval approach, previously used in planetary atmosphere studies, to extract the…
The field of exoplanet research has revitalized interest in M dwarfs, which have become favorite targets of Doppler and transit surveys. Accurate measurements of their basic properties such as masses, radii, and effective temperatures have…
We present improved atmospheric parameters of nearby white dwarfs lying within 20 pc of the Sun. The aim of the current study is to obtain the best statistical model of the least-biased sample of the white dwarf population. A homogeneous…
We present early results from a Hubble Space Telescope survey of the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. These Milky Way satellites were discovered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and appear to be an extension of the classical dwarf spheroidals to…
An Earth-like exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf would be exposed to different UV environments than Earth, influencing both its atmospheric photochemistry and UV surface environment. Using a coupled 1D climate-photochemistry code we model…
With the prevalence of wide-field, time-domain photometric sky surveys, the number of eclipsing white dwarf systems being discovered is increasing dramatically. An efficient method to follow these up will be key to determining any…
The white dwarf luminosity function, which provides information about their cooling, has been measured with high precision in the past few years. Simulations that include well known Standard Model physics give a good fit to the data. This…
Mass is the fundamental parameter that governs the evolution of stars, brown dwarfs, and gas-giant planets. Thus, direct mass measurements are essential to test the evolutionary and atmospheric models that underpin studies of these objects.…
The space density of white dwarfs is highly uncertain even nearby. This results from the fact that the known sample of white dwarfs is largely incomplete in part because most white dwarfs have been discovered as by-products in non-dedicated…
Exoplanet research has shown an incessant growth since the first claim of a hot giant planet around a solar-like star in the mid-1990s. Today, the new facilities are working to spot the first habitable rocky planets around low-mass stars as…
The SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project aims to detect temperate terrestrial planets transiting nearby ultracool dwarfs, including late M-dwarf stars and brown dwarfs, which are well-suited for…
A fraction of very low mass stars and brown dwarfs are known to be radio active, in some cases producing periodic pulses. Extensive studies of two such objects have also revealed optical periodic variability and the nature of this…
The aim of the Degenerate Objects around Degenerate Objects (DODO) survey is to search for very low mass brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets in wide orbits around white dwarfs via direct imaging. The direct detection of such companions…
Theoretical arguments and observations suggest that the atmospheres of Brown Dwarfs and planets are very dynamic on chemical and on physical time scales. The modelling of such substellar atmospheres has, hence, been much more demanding than…
*Abbreviated abstract* Context: Brown dwarfs in the spectral range L9-T3.5, within the so called L/T transition, have been shown to be variable at higher amplitudes and with greater frequency than other field dwarfs. [...] Now, more…
We present the most precise constraints to date for the mass and age distributions of single ultracool dwarfs in the solar neighborhood, based on an updated volume-limited sample of 504 L, T, and Y dwarfs within 25 pc. We develop a Monte…
The spectroscopic features of white dwarfs are formed in the thin upper layer of their stellar photosphere. These features carry information about the white dwarf's surface temperature, surface gravity, and chemical composition (hereafter…