Astronomy

An international team led by French and Canadian astronomers has just discovered the coldest brown dwarf ever observed. Their results has been on April 10th issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The brown dwarf is named CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3 (it will be called CFBDS0059 in the following). Its temperature is about 350°C and its mass about 15-30 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet of our solar system. Located about 40 light years from our solar system, it is an isolated object, meaning that it doesn’t orbit another star.

This new finding made possible by the framework of the Canada-France Brown-Dwarfs survey. The object was first identified in pictures from the wide-field camera Megacam installed on the CFHT (Canada France Hawaii Telescope). Infrared pictures were then obtained with the NTT telescope (La Silla, ESO, Chile) and confirmed the low temperature of the object. Finally, the spectrum showing the presence of ammonia was obtained using the Gemini North Telescope (Hawaii).

Picture of the brown dwarf CFBDS0059 (small red dot on the top of the picture) and its near-infrared spectrum (lowest curve) illustrating the presence of ammonia.

To date, two classes of brown dwarfs have been known: the L dwarfs (temperature of 1200-2000°C), which have clouds of dust and aerosols in their high atmosphere; and the T dwarfs (temperature lower than 1200°C), which have a very different spectrum because of methane forming in their atmospheres. Because it contains ammonia and has a much lower temperature than do L and T dwarfs, CFBDS0059 might be the prototype of a new class of brown dwarfs to be called the Y dwarfs. This new class would then become the missing link in the sequence from the hottest stars to giant planets of less than -100°C, by filling the gap now left in the midrange.

This discovery also has important implications in the study of extrasolar planets. The atmosphere of brown dwarfs looks very much like that of giant planets, therefore the same models are used to reproduce their physical conditions. Such modeling needs to be tested against observations. Observing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets is indeed very hard because the light from the planets is embedded in the much stronger light from their parent stars. Because brown dwarfs are isolated bodies, they are much easier to observe. Thus, looking to brown dwarfs with a temperature close to that of the giant planets will help in testing the models of extrasolar planets’ atmospheres.

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