Measuring ultracool properties from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedWe discuss the properties and of ultracool and brown dwarfs that can be measured from current large area surveys and how fundamental parameters, such as the mass function and formation history can be measured, describing our own first measurement of the formation history in the sub-stellar regime using data from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey

Sub-stellar objects with habitable-zone temperatures: A new search for Y dwarfs in WISE

A method is defined for using the maximum sensitivity of WISE to find late T and Y dwarfs. This requires a WISE detection only in the W2-band and uses the statistical properties of the WISE multi-frame measurements and profile fit photometry to reject contamination resulting from non-point-like objects, variables and moving sources. To trace our desired parameter space we use a control sample of isolated non-moving non-variable point sources from the SDSS, and identify a sample of 158 WISE W2-only candidates down to a signal-to-noise limit of 8. For signal-to-noise ranges >10 and 8-10 respectively, ∼45% and ∼90% of our sample fall outside the criteria published by the WISE team (Kirkpatrick et al. 2012), due mainly to the type of constraints placed on the number of individual W2 detections. We present some early follow-up of our sample and identify two new very late objects with high proper motion (∼1.3 and ∼1.8 arcsec yr−1). Based on colour, brightness and proper motion, these object are either ∼T9 dwarfs with thick-disk/halo kinematics, or Y dwarfs with more disk-like kinematics. Reduced proper motion diagrams are also presented which suggest that late T and Y dwarfs may have a much higher thick-disk/halo population fraction than earlier objects

A metal-biased planet search

Copyright (2009) American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article [ Jenkins, J.S., Jones, H.R.A., Barnes, J.R., Pavlenko, Y., Rojo, P., Jones, M.I., Day-Jones, A.C. and Pinfield, D.J. (2009) ' A metal-biased planet search.' ] appeared in AIP Conference Proceedings Volume 1094 - Proceedings of the 15th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun pp.449-452 and may be found at: http://proceedings.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=APCPCS&amp;Volume=1094&amp;Issue=1 DOI: 10.1063/1.3099144We have begun a metal-rich planet search project using the HARPS instrument in La Silla, Chile to target planets with a high potential to transit their host star and add to the number of bright benchmark transiting planets. The sample currently consists of 100, bright (7.5V9.5) solar-type stars (0.5B−V0.9) in the southern hemisphere which are both inactive (log RHK−4.5) and metal-rich ([Fe/H]0.1 dex). We determined the chromospheric activity and metallicity status of our sample using high resolution FEROS spectra. We also introduce the first result from our HARPS planet search and show that the radial-velocity amplitude of this star is consistent with an orbiting planetary-mass companion (i.e. M sin i<0.5 MJ) with a period of ~5 days. We are currently engaged in follow-up to confirm this signal as a bonafide orbiting planet

The discovery of a very cool, very nearby brown dwarf in the Galactic plane

We report the discovery of a very cool, isolated brown dwarf, UGPS 0722−05, with the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Galactic Plane Survey. The near-infrared spectrum displays deeper H2O and CH4 troughs than the coolest known T dwarfs and an unidentified absorption feature at 1.275 μm. We provisionally classify the object as a T10 dwarf but note that it may in future come to be regarded as the first example of a new spectral type. The distance is measured by trigonometric parallax as d= 4.1+0.6−0.5 pc, making it the closest known isolated brown dwarf. With the aid of Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) we measure H−[4.5]= 4.71. It is the coolest brown dwarf presently known – the only known T dwarf that is redder in H−[4.5] is the peculiar T7.5 dwarf SDSS J1416+13B, which is thought to be warmer and more luminous than UGPS 0722−05. Our measurement of the luminosity, aided by Gemini/T-ReCS N-band photometry, is L= 9.2 ± 3.1 × 10−7 L⊙. Using a comparison with well-studied T8.5 and T9 dwarfs we deduce Teff= 520 ± 40 K. This is supported by predictions of the Saumon & Marley models. With apparent magnitude J= 16.52, UGPS 0722−05 is the brightest of the ∼90 T dwarfs discovered by UKIDSS so far. It offers opportunities for future study via high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy and spectroscopy in the thermal infrared.Peer reviewe