ULAS J141623.94$ + $134836.3 - a faint common proper motion companion of a nearby L dwarf. Serendipitous discovery of a cool brown dwarf in UKIDSS DR6
R.-D. Scholz

TL;DR
This paper reports the discovery of a very cool, faint brown dwarf companion to a nearby L dwarf, identified through UKIDSS data, and confirms their physical association and unique properties.
Contribution
First detection of a faint, cool brown dwarf companion to a nearby L dwarf using UKIDSS data, expanding knowledge of brown dwarf populations.
Findings
The brown dwarf is physically associated with the L dwarf at ~8 pc.
It has extremely blue near-infrared colours and is among the coolest known brown dwarfs.
The object is likely a late-T spectral type with an effective temperature around 600 K.
Abstract
New near-infrared large-area sky surveys (e.g. UKIDSS, CFBDS, WISE) go deeper than 2MASS and aim at detecting brown dwarfs lurking in the Solar neighbourhood which are even fainter than the latest known T-type objects, so-called Y dwarfs. Using UKIDSS data, we have found a faint brown dwarf candidate with very red optical-to-near-infrared but extremely blue near-infrared colours next to the recently discovered nearby L dwarf SDSS J141624.08134826.7. We check if the two objects are co-moving by studying their parallactic and proper motion and compare the new object with known T dwarfs. The astrometric measurements are consistent with a physical pair (75 AU) at a distance 8 pc. The extreme colour (1.7) and absolute magnitude (=17.780.46 and =19.450.52) make the new object appear as one of the coolest…
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Taxonomy
TopicsStellar, planetary, and galactic studies · Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies · Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae
