An overlooked brown dwarf neighbour (T7.5 at d~5pc) of the Sun and two additional T dwarfs at about 10pc

TL;DR

This study used multi-epoch sky survey data to discover and classify three nearby brown dwarfs, including the closest T7.5 dwarf to the Sun, thereby improving the census of local substellar objects.

Contribution

It reports the discovery and classification of three new brown dwarfs near the Sun using combined multi-wavelength survey data and proper motion analysis.

Findings

Discovered the nearest T7.5 dwarf at 5 pc from the Sun.

Identified two additional early-T dwarfs within 13 pc.

All three objects exhibit thin disk kinematics.

Abstract

Although many new brown dwarf (BD) neighbours have recently been discovered thanks to new sky surveys in the mid- and near-infrared (MIR, NIR), their numbers are still more than five times lower than those of stars in the same volume. Our aim is to detect and classify new BDs to eventually complete their census in the immediate Solar neighbourhood. We combined multi-epoch data from sky surveys at different wavelengths to detect BD neighbours of the Sun by their high proper motion (HPM). We concentrated at relatively bright MIR (w2<13.5) BD candidates from WISE expected to be so close to the Sun that they may also be seen in older NIR (2MASS, DENIS) or even red optical (SDSS i- and z-band, SSS I-band) surveys. With low-resolution NIR spectroscopy we classified the new BDs and estimated their distances and velocities. We have discovered the HPM (pm~470mas/yr) T7.5 dwarf, WISE J0521+1025, which is at d=5.0+-1.3pc from the Sun the nearest known T dwarf in the northern sky, and two early-T dwarfs, WISE J0457-0207 (T2) and WISE J2030+0749 (T1.5), with proper motions of ~120 and ~670mas/yr and distances of 12.5+-3.1pc and 10.5+-2.6pc, respectively. The last one was independently discovered and also classified as a T1.5 dwarf by Mace and coworkers. All three show thin disk kinematics. They may have been overlooked in the past owing to overlapping images and because of problems with matching objects between different surveys and measuring their proper motions.