相关论文: Brown Dwarfs: From Mythical to Ubiquitous

The discovery of the first methane brown dwarf provides a framework for describing the important advances in both fundamental physics and astrophysics that are due to the study of companions of stars. I present a few highlights of the…

Cool L- and T-type objects were discovered first as companions to stars in 1988 and 1995, respectively. A certain example of the yet cooler Y-type spectral class (Teff <~ 500K?) has not been seen. Recent infrared imaging observations of…

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…

Since October of 1995, employing Doppler spectroscopy astronomers have discovered as many as 20 giant planets and brown dwarfs, including companions to $\tau$ Boo, 51 Peg, $\upsilon$ And, 55 Cnc, $\rho$ CrB, 70 Vir, 16 Cyg B, and 47 UMa.…

This paper summarizes the results of over 17 years of work searching for low mass stellar and substellar companions to more than 370 nearby white dwarfs. Roughly 60 low mass, unevolved companions were found and studied all together, with…

Stars form in the Galaxy with a wide range in mass. If the mass is below 7% of the Sun's, then the object does not become hot enough for stable hydrogen burning. These substellar objects are called brown dwarfs. Maps of the sky at infrared…

The very recent discovery of planets orbiting very low mass stars sheds light on these exotic objects. Planetary systems around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are very different from our solar system: the planets are expected to be much…

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…

A substellar-mass object in orbit at about 300 astronomical units (AU) from the young low-mass star G196-3 was detected by direct imaging. Optical and infrared photometry and low- and intermediate-resolution spectroscopy of the faint…

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…

Since the discovery of the first bona-fide brown dwarfs and extra-solar planets in 1995, the field of low mass stars and substellar objects has considerably progressed, both from theoretical and observational viewpoints.Recent developments…

Observations of accretion disks around young brown dwarfs have led to the speculation that they may form planetary systems similar to normal stars. While there have been several detections of planetary-mass objects around brown dwarfs…

We have performed a survey for substellar companions to young brown dwarfs in the Taurus star-forming region using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. In these data, we have discovered a candidate…

The mass domain where massive extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs lay is still poorly understood. Indeed, not even a clear dividing line between massive planets and brown dwarfs has been established yet. This is partly due to the paucity of…

After a discussion of the physical processes in brown dwarfs, we present a complete, precise definition of brown dwarfs and of planets inspired by the internal physics of objects between 0.1 and 0.001 M_sun. We discuss observational…

We present the results of a survey for stellar and substellar companions to 82 young stars in the nearby OB association Upper Scorpius. This survey used nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry to achieve typical contrast limits of…

Planet searches using the radial velocity technique show a paucity of companions to solar-type stars within ~5 AU in the mass range of ~10 - 80 M$_{\text{Jup}}$. This deficit, known as the brown dwarf desert, currently has no conclusive…

Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects between planets and stars. The lower end of the brown-dwarf mass range overlaps with the one of massive planets and therefore the distinction between planets and brown-dwarf companions may require to…

We present a high-contrast imaging survey of intermediate-mass (1.75--4.5 $M_\odot$) stars to search for the most extreme stellar binaries, i.e., for the lowest mass stellar companions. Using adaptive optics at the Lick and Gemini…

We report the discovery of a population of late-M and L field dwarfs with unusual optical and near-infrared spectral features that we attribute to low gravity -- likely uncommonly young, low-mass brown dwarfs. Many of these new-found young…