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  • Softich, Emma; Schneider, Adam C; Patience, Jennifer; Burgasser, Adam J; Shkolnik, Evgenya; Faherty, Jacqueline K; Caselden, Dan; Meisner, Aaron M; J Davy Kirkpatrick; Kuchner, Marc J; Gagne, Jonathan; Gagliuffi, Daniella Bardalez; Cushing, Michael C; Casewell, Sarah L; Aganze, Christian; Hsu, Chih-Chun; Nikolaj Stevnbak Andersen; Kiwy, Frank; Thevenot, Melina; The Backyard Worlds; Planet 9 Collaboration

    arXiv.org, 02/2022
    Paper, Journal Article

    While stars are often found in binary systems, brown dwarf binaries are much rarer. Brown dwarf--brown dwarf pairs are typically difficult to resolve because they often have very small separations. Using brown dwarfs discovered with data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) via the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project, we inspected other, higher resolution, sky surveys for overlooked cold companions. During this process we discovered the brown dwarf binary system CWISE J0146\(-\)0508AB, which we find has a very small chance alignment probability based on the similar proper motions of the components of the system. Using follow-up near-infrared spectroscopy with Keck/NIRES, we determined component spectral types of L4 and L8 (blue), making CWISE J0146\(-\)0508AB one of only a few benchmark systems with a blue L dwarf. At an estimated distance of \(\sim\)40 pc, CWISE J0146\(-\)0508AB has a projected separation of \(\sim\)129 AU, making it the widest separation brown dwarf pair found to date. We find that such a wide separation for a brown dwarf binary may imply formation in a low-density star-forming region.