Spitzer Follow-up of Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project

TL;DR

This study uses Spitzer follow-up imaging to confirm and characterize extremely cold brown dwarf candidates discovered by the Backyard Worlds citizen science project, identifying new Y dwarfs and wide companions.

Contribution

It provides the first Spitzer-based phototyping and astrometric confirmation of a large sample of cold brown dwarf candidates from Backyard Worlds, including new Y dwarfs and wide binary systems.

Findings

75 objects with confirmed transverse motion

Identification of 5 Y dwarf candidates, 4 with very red colors

Discovery of a wide T8 companion to a white dwarf

Abstract

We present Spitzer follow-up imaging of 95 candidate extremely cold brown dwarfs discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project, which uses visually perceived motion in multi-epoch WISE images to identify previously unrecognized substellar neighbors to the Sun. We measure Spitzer [3.6]-[4.5] color to phototype our brown dwarf candidates, with an emphasis on pinpointing the coldest and closest Y dwarfs within our sample. The combination of WISE and Spitzer astrometry provides quantitative confirmation of the transverse motion of 75 of our discoveries. Nine of our motion-confirmed objects have best-fit linear motions larger than 1"/yr; our fastest-moving discovery is WISEA J155349.96+693355.2 (total motion ~2.15"/yr), a possible T type subdwarf. We also report a newly discovered wide-separation (~400 AU) T8 comoving companion to the white dwarf LSPM J0055+5948 (the fourth such system to be found), plus a candidate late T companion to the white dwarf LSR J0002+6357 at 5.5' projected separation (~8,700 AU if associated). Among our motion-confirmed targets, five have Spitzer colors most consistent with spectral type Y. Four of these five have exceptionally red Spitzer colors suggesting types of Y1 or later, adding considerably to the small sample of known objects in this especially valuable low-temperature regime. Our Y dwarf candidates begin bridging the gap between the bulk of the Y dwarf population and the coldest known brown dwarf.