We have performed a search for planetary-mass brown dwarfs in the Chamaeleon I star-forming region using proper motions and photometry measured from optical and infrared images from the Spitzer Space ...Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities. Through near-IR spectroscopy at Gemini Observatory, we have confirmed six of the candidates as new late-type members of Chamaeleon I (≥M8). One of these objects, Cha J11110675−7636030, has the faintest extinction-corrected MK among known members, which corresponds to a mass of 3-6 according to evolutionary models. That object and two other new members have redder mid-IR colors than young photospheres at ≤M9.5, which may indicate the presence of disks. However, since those objects may be later than M9.5 and the mid-IR colors of young photospheres are ill-defined at those types, we cannot determine conclusively whether color excesses from disks are present. If Cha J11110675−7636030 does have a disk, it would be a contender for the least-massive known brown dwarf with a disk. Since the new brown dwarfs that we have found extend below our completeness limit of 6-10 M , deeper observations are needed to measure the minimum mass of the initial mass function in Chamaeleon I.
The CatWISE2020 Catalog Marocco, Federico; Eisenhardt, Peter R. M.; Fowler, John W. ...
The Astrophysical journal. Supplement series,
03/2021, Letnik:
253, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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Abstract
The CatWISE2020 Catalog consists of 1,890,715,640 sources over the entire sky selected from Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and NEOWISE survey data at 3.4 and 4.6
μ
m (W1 and W2) ...collected from 2010 January 7 to 2018 December 13. This data set adds two years to that used for the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog, bringing the total to six times as many exposures spanning over 16 times as large a time baseline as the AllWISE catalog. The other major change from the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog is that the detection list for the CatWISE2020 Catalog was generated using
crowdsource
from Schlafly et al., while the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog used the detection software used for AllWISE. These two factors result in roughly twice as many sources in the CatWISE2020 Catalog. The scatter with respect to Spitzer photometry at faint magnitudes in the COSMOS field, which is out of the Galactic Plane and at low ecliptic latitude (corresponding to lower WISE coverage depth) is similar to that for the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog. The 90% completeness depth for the CatWISE2020 Catalog is at W1 = 17.7 mag and W2 = 17.5 mag, 1.7 mag deeper than in the CatWISE Preliminary Catalog. In comparison to Gaia, CatWISE2020 motions are accurate at the 20 mas yr
−1
level for W1∼15 mag sources and at the ∼100 mas yr
−1
level for W1∼17 mag sources. This level of accuracy represents a 12× improvement over AllWISE. The CatWISE catalogs are available in the WISE/NEOWISE Enhanced and Contributed Products area of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
We present a sample of 74,216 M and L dwarfs constructed from two existing catalogs of cool dwarfs spectroscopically identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We cross-matched the SDSS ...catalog with Gaia DR2 to obtain parallaxes and proper motions and modified the quality cuts suggested by the Gaia Collaboration to make them suitable for late-M and L dwarfs. We also provide relations between Gaia colors and absolute magnitudes with spectral type and conclude that (G − ) has the tightest relation to spectral type for M and L dwarfs. In addition, we study magnetic activity as a function of position on the color-magnitude diagram, finding that H magnetically active stars have, on average, redder colors and/or brighter magnitudes than inactive stars. This effect cannot be explained by youth alone and might indicate that active stars are magnetically inflated, binaries, and/or high metallicity. Moreover, we find that vertical velocity and vertical action dispersion are correlated with H emission, confirming that these two parameters are age indicators. We also find that stars below the main sequence have high tangential velocity, which is consistent with a low metallicity and old population of stars that belong to the halo or thick disk.
We present thermal phase curve measurements for the hot Jupiter WASP-103b observed with Hubble/WFC3 and Spitzer/IRAC. The phase curves have large amplitudes and negligible hotspot offsets, indicative ...of poor heat redistribution to the nightside. We fit the phase variation with a range of climate maps and find that a spherical harmonics model generally provides the best fit. The phase-resolved spectra are consistent with blackbodies in the WFC3 bandpass, with brightness temperatures ranging from 1880 40 K on the nightside to 2930 40 K on the dayside. The dayside spectrum has a significantly higher brightness temperature in the Spitzer bands, likely due to CO emission and a thermal inversion. The inversion is not present on the nightside. We retrieved the atmospheric composition and found that it is moderately metal-enriched ( ) and the carbon-to-oxygen ratio is below 0.9 at 3 confidence. In contrast to cooler hot Jupiters, we do not detect spectral features from water, which we attribute to partial H2O dissociation. We compare the phase curves to 3D general circulation models and find that magnetic drag effects are needed to match the data. We also compare the WASP-103b spectra to brown dwarfs and young, directly imaged companions. We find that these objects have significantly larger water features, indicating that surface gravity and irradiation environment play an important role in shaping the spectra of hot Jupiters. These results highlight the 3D structure of exoplanet atmospheres and illustrate the importance of phase curve observations for understanding their complex chemistry and physics.
Cold brown dwarfs are excellent analogs of widely separated, gas giant exoplanets, and provide insight into the potential atmospheric chemistry and physics we may encounter in objects to be ...discovered by future direct imaging surveys. We present a low-resolution, R ∼ 300, M-band spectroscopic sequence of seven brown dwarfs with effective temperatures between 750 and 250 K along with Jupiter. These spectra reveal disequilibrium abundances of carbon monoxide (CO) produced by atmospheric quenching. We use the eddy diffusion coefficient (Kzz) to estimate the strength of vertical mixing in each object. The Kzz values of cooler gaseous objects are close to their theoretical maximum, and warmer objects show weaker mixing, likely due to less efficient convective mixing in primarily radiative layers. The CO-derived Kzz values imply that disequilibrium phosphine (PH3) should be easily observable in all of the brown dwarfs, but none as yet show any evidence for PH3 absorption. We find that ammonia is relatively insensitive to atmospheric quenching at these effective temperatures. We are able to improve the fit to WISE 0855's M-band spectrum by including both CO and water clouds in the atmospheric model.
Abstract
Using a sample of 361 nearby brown dwarfs, we have searched for 4.6
μ
m variability, indicative of large-scale rotational modulations or large-scale, long-term changes on timescales of over ...10 yr. Our findings show no statistically significant variability in Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) channel 2 (ch2) or Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer W2 photometry. For Spitzer the ch2 1
σ
limits are ∼8 mmag for objects at 11.5 mag and ∼22 mmag for objects at 16 mag. This corresponds to no variability above 4.5% at 11.5 mag and 12.5% at 16 mag. We conclude that highly variable brown dwarfs, at least two previously published examples of which have been shown to have 4.6
μ
m variability above 80 mmag, are very rare. While analyzing the data, we also developed a new technique for identifying brown dwarf binary candidates in Spitzer data. We find that known binaries have IRAC ch2 point response function (PRF) flux measurements that are consistently dimmer than aperture flux measurements. We have identified 59 objects that exhibit such PRF versus aperture flux differences and are thus excellent binary brown dwarf candidates.
Abstract
Brown dwarf spectra offer vital testbeds for our understanding of the chemical and physical processes that sculpt substellar atmospheres. Recently, atmospheric retrieval approaches have been ...successfully applied to low-resolution (
R
∼ 100) spectra of L, T, and Y dwarfs, yielding constraints on the chemical abundances and temperature structures of these atmospheres. Medium-resolution (
R
∼ 10
3
) spectra of brown dwarfs offer additional insight, as molecular features are more easily disentangled and the thermal structure of the upper atmosphere is better probed. We present results from a GPU-based retrieval analysis of a high signal-to-noise, medium-resolution (
R
∼ 6000) FIRE spectrum from 0.85 to 2.5
μ
m of the T9 dwarf UGPS J072227.51–054031.2. At 60× higher spectral resolution than previous brown dwarf retrievals, a number of novel challenges arise. We examine the effect of different opacity sources, in particular for CH
4
. Furthermore, we find that flaws in the data like errors from order stitching can bias our constraints. We compare these retrieval results to those for an
R
∼ 100 spectrum of the same object, revealing how constraints on atmospheric abundances and temperatures improve by an order of magnitude or more with increased spectral resolution. In particular, we can constrain the abundance of H
2
S, which is undetectable at lower spectral resolution. While these medium-resolution retrievals offer the potential of precise, stellar-like constraints on atmospheric abundances (∼0.02 dex), our retrieved radius is unphysically small (
R
=
0.50
−
0.01
+
0.01
R
Jup
), indicating shortcomings with our modeling framework. This work is an initial investigation into brown dwarf retrievals at medium spectral resolution, offering guidance for future ground-based studies and JWST observations.
Photometric brown-dwarf classification Skrzypek, N.; Warren, S. J.; Faherty, J. K. ...
Astronomy and astrophysics (Berlin),
02/2015, Letnik:
574
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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Aims. We present a method, named photo-type, to identify and accurately classify L and T dwarfs onto the standard spectral classification system using photometry alone. This enables the creation of ...large and deep homogeneous samples of these objects efficiently, without the need for spectroscopy. Methods. We created a catalogue of point sources with photometry in 8 bands, ranging from 0.75 to 4.6 μm, selected from an area of 3344 deg2, by combining SDSS, UKIDSS LAS, and WISE data. Sources with 13.0 <J< 17.5, and Y − J> 0.8, were then classified by comparison against template colours of quasars, stars, and brown dwarfs. The L and T templates, spectral types L0 to T8, were created by identifying previously known sources with spectroscopic classifications, and fitting polynomial relations between colour and spectral type. Results. Of the 192 known L and T dwarfs with reliable photometry in the surveyed area and magnitude range, 189 are recovered by our selection and classification method. We have quantified the accuracy of the classification method both externally, with spectroscopy, and internally, by creating synthetic catalogues and accounting for the uncertainties. We find that, brighter than J = 17.5, photo-type classifications are accurate to one spectral sub-type, and are therefore competitive with spectroscopic classifications. The resultant catalogue of 1157 L and T dwarfs will be presented in a companion paper.
In the search for life in the cosmos, transiting exoplanets are currently our best targets. In the search for life in the cosmos, transiting exoplanets are currently our best targets. With thousands ...already detected, our search is entering a new era of discovery with upcoming large telescopes that will look for signs of life in the atmospheres of transiting worlds. However, the universe is dynamic, and which stars in the solar neighborhood have a vantage point to see Earth as a transiting planet and can identify its vibrant biosphere since early human civilizations are unknown. Here we show that 1,715 stars within 326 light-years are in the right position to have spotted life on a transiting Earth since early human civilization, with an additional 319 stars entering this special vantage point in the next 5,000 years. Among the stars are 7 known exoplanet hosts that hold the vantage point to see Earth transit, including Ross-128, which saw Earth transit in the past, Teegarden's Star, and Trappist-1, which will start to see Earth transit in 29 and 1,642 years, respectively. We found that human-made radio waves have swept over 75 of the closest stars on our list already.
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