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Published January 10, 2020 | Published + Accepted Version
Journal Article Open

Improved Infrared Photometry and a Preliminary Parallax Measurement for the Extremely Cold Brown Dwarf CWISEP J144606.62-231717.8

Abstract

We present follow-up Spitzer observations at 3.6 μm (ch1) and 4.5 μm (ch2) of CWISEP J144606.62–231717.8, one of the coldest known brown dwarfs in the solar neighborhood. This object was found by mining the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and NEOWISE data via the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog by Meisner et al., where an initial Spitzer color of ch1–ch2 = 3.71 ± 0.44 mag was reported, implying it could be one of the reddest, and hence coldest, known brown dwarfs. Additional Spitzer data presented here allows us to revise its color to ch1–ch2 = 2.986 ± 0.048 mag, which makes CWISEP J144606.62–231717.8 the fifth reddest brown dwarf ever observed. A preliminary trigonometric parallax measurement, based on a combination of WISE and Spitzer astrometry, places this object at a distance of 10.1_(-1.3)^(+1.7) pc. Based on our improved Spitzer color and preliminary parallax, CWISEP J144606.62–231717.8 has a T_(eff) in the 310–360 K range. Assuming an age of 0.5–13 Gyr, this corresponds to a mass between 2 and 20 M_(Jup).

Additional Information

© 2020. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2019 December 3; revised 2019 December 10; accepted 2019 December 14; published 2020 January 9. This research was partly carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. F.M. is supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. A.M.M. acknowledges support from Hubble Fellowship HST-HF2-51415.001-A. CatWISE is funded by NASA under Proposal No. 16-ADAP16-0077 issued through the Astrophysics Data Analysis Program, and uses data from the NASA-funded WISE and NEOWISE projects. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. Facilities: Spitzer (IRAC) - , WISE/NEOWISE - . Software: XGBoost (Chen & Guestrin 2016), MOPEX (Makovoz & Khan 2005; Makovoz & Marleau 2005), WiseView (Caselden et al. 2018).

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Published - Marocco_2020_ApJL_888_L19.pdf

Accepted Version - 1912.07692.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023