A 2MASS/AllWISE Search for Extremely Red L Dwarfs: The Discovery of Several Likely L Type Members of β Pic, AB Dor, Tuc-Hor, Argus, and the Hyades
Abstract
Young brown dwarfs share many properties with directly imaged giant extrasolar planets. They therefore provide unique laboratories for investigating the full range of temperature and mass encompassed by the growing collection of planets discovered outside our Solar System. Furthermore, if they can be tied to a particular group of coeval stars, they also provide vital anchor points for low-mass empirical isochrones. We have developed a novel procedure for identifying such objects based on their unique 2MASS and AllWISE colors. Using our search criteria, we have identified 50 new, late-type L dwarf candidates, 47 of which are spectroscopically confirmed as L dwarfs with follow-up near-infrared spectroscopy. We evaluate the potential membership of these objects in nearby, young moving groups using their proper motions, photometric distance estimates, and spectroscopic indicators of youth, and find seven likely L-type members belonging to the β Pictoris moving group, the AB Doradus moving group, the Tucana-Horologium association, or the Argus association, in addition to several lower probability members. Also found are two late-type (L5 and L6) potential members of the nearby Hyades cluster (WISEA J043642.75+190134.8 and WISEA J044105.56+213001.5).
Additional Information
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 January 17; revised 2017 March 3; accepted 2017 March 10; published 2017 April 4. A.S. and E.S. appreciate support from NASA grant NNX16AB62G. The authors would like to thank Katelyn Allers for help with the ARCoIRIS observations and the reduction of ARCoIRIS and FIRE data, and Scott Sheppard for useful discussions regarding FIRE observations. This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 meter Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile and is based in part on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO Prop. ID: 2016B-0003; PI: A. Schneider), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research has benefitted from the M, L, T, and Y dwarf compendium housed at dwarfarchives.org. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain.Attached Files
Published - Schneider_2017_AJ_153_196.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 75856
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170407-134352906
- NNX-08AE38A
- NASA
- NNX16AB62G
- NASA
- NSF
- Created
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2017-04-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)