An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

Mass, radius, and age are three of the most fundamental parameters for celestial objects, enabling studies of the evolution and internal physics of stars, brown dwarfs, and planets. Brown dwarfs are hydrogen-rich objects that are unable to sustain core fusion reactions but are supported from collapse by electron degeneracy pressure. As they age, brown dwarfs cool, reducing their radius and luminosity. Young exoplanets follow a similar behaviour. Brown dwarf evolutionary models are relied upon to infer the masses, radii and ages of these objects. Similar models are used to infer the mass and radius of directly imaged exoplanets. Unfortunately, only sparse empirical mass, radius and age measurements are currently available, and the models remain mostly unvalidated. Double-line eclipsing binaries provide the most direct route for the absolute determination of the masses and radii of stars. Here, we report the SPECULOOS discovery of 2M1510A, a nearby, eclipsing, double-line brown dwarf binary, with a widely-separated tertiary brown dwarf companion. We also find that the system is a member of the $45\pm5$ Myr-old moving group, Argus. The system's age matches those of currently known directly-imaged exoplanets. 2M1510A provides an opportunity to benchmark evolutionary models of brown dwarfs and young planets. We find that widely-used evolutionary models do reproduce the mass, radius and age of the binary components remarkably well, but overestimate the luminosity by up to 0.65 magnitudes, which could result in underestimated photometric masses for directly-imaged exoplanets and young field brown dwarfs by 20 to 35%

A radio-pulsing white dwarf binary star

White dwarfs are compact stars, similar in size to Earth but ~200,000 times more massive. Isolated white dwarfs emit most of their power from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, but when in close orbits with less dense stars, white dwarfs can strip material from their companions, and the resulting mass transfer can generate atomic line and X-ray emission, as well as near- and mid-infrared radiation if the white dwarf is magnetic. However, even in binaries, white dwarfs are rarely detected at far-infrared or radio frequencies. Here we report the discovery of a white dwarf / cool star binary that emits from X-ray to radio wavelengths. The star, AR Scorpii (henceforth AR Sco), was classified in the early 1970s as a delta-Scuti star, a common variety of periodic variable star. Our observations reveal instead a 3.56 hr period close binary, pulsing in brightness on a period of 1.97 min. The pulses are so intense that AR Sco's optical flux can increase by a factor of four within 30 s, and they are detectable at radio frequencies, the first such detection for any white dwarf system. They reflect the spin of a magnetic white dwarf which we find to be slowing down on a 10^7 yr timescale. The spin-down power is an order of magnitude larger than that seen in electromagnetic radiation, which, together with an absence of obvious signs of accretion, suggests that AR Sco is primarily spin-powered. Although the pulsations are driven by the white dwarf's spin, they originate in large part from the cool star. AR Sco's broad-band spectrum is characteristic of synchrotron radiation, requiring relativistic electrons. These must either originate from near the white dwarf or be generated in situ at the M star through direct interaction with the white dwarf's magnetosphere

The patchy accretion disc in HT Cassiopeiae

We reconstruct the temperatures and surface densities in the quiescent accretion disc in HT Cas by performing a Physical Parameter Eclipse Mapping analysis of archival UBVR observations. Using a simple hydrogen slab model and demanding a smooth, maximally artefact-free reconstruction, we derive a formal distance to HT Cas of 207 +/- 10 pc, significantly larger than the 133 +/- 14 pc we derive from a re-analysis of the data in the literature.The accretion disc is small (0.3-0.4 R-L1 ) and moderately optically thin, but becomes nearly optically thick near the white dwarf. The temperatures and surface densities in the disc range from 9500 K and 0.013 g cm(-2) in the centre to about 4000 K and 0.04 g cm(-2) at the disc edge. The mass-accretion rate in the disc is roughly constant but - at the derived distance - uncomfortably close to the rate that would prohibit the dwarf nova eruptions.We argue that the larger derived distance is probably incorrect but is not produced by inaccuracies in our spectral model or optimization method. The discrepancy can be resolved if the emission regions on the disc are patchy with a filling factor of about 40 per cent of the disc's surface. This solves the problem with the high effective temperatures in the disc - reducing them to around 6500 K within a radius of 0.2 R-L1 - and reduces the derived temperature of the white dwarf and/or boundary layer from 22 600 to 15 500 K.The viscosity parameters alpha derived from all reconstructed temperatures and surface densities are of order 10-100 and cannot be lowered significantly by invoking a lower distance or the filling factor. This situation is easily explained using the same patchy nature of the emitting material, since the quiescent disc cannot consist of optically thin regions alone, but also of a dark and hence cold and dense disc which could easily contain most of the matter. If we require global values of alpha of order 0.1, the implied total surface densities are 1-100 g cm(-2) - just like those expected for quiescent discs awaiting the next eruption.We discuss several possible sources of the chromospheric emission and its patchiness, including irradiation of the disc, thermal instabilities, spiral-wave-like global structures, and magnetically active regions associated with dynamo action and/or Balbus-Hawley instabilities.</p

An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

Mass, radius and age are three of the most fundamental parameters for celestial objects, enabling insight into the evolution and internal physics of stars, brown dwarfs and planets. Brown dwarfs are hydrogen-rich objects that are unable to sustain core fusion reactions but are supported against collapse by electron degeneracy pressure1. As they age, brown dwarfs cool, reducing their radius and luminosity. Young exoplanets follow a similar behaviour. Brown dwarf evolutionary models are relied upon to infer the masses, radii and ages of young brown dwarfs2,3. Similar models are also used to infer the mass and radius of directly imaged exoplanets4. Unfortunately, only sparse empirical mass, radius and age measurements are currently available, and so the models remain mostly unvalidated. Double-line eclipsing binaries provide the most direct route towards the absolute determination of the masses and radii of stars5–7. Here we report the discovery by SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) of the 2M1510A triple system, consisting of a nearby, eclipsing, double-line brown dwarf binary and a widely separated tertiary brown dwarf companion. We find that the system is a member of Argus, a 45 ± 5 million-year-old moving group8,9. The system’s age matches those of currently known directly imaged exoplanets so 2M1510A provides an opportunity to benchmark evolutionary models of brown dwarfs and young planets. We find that widely used evolutionary models3 do reproduce the mass, radius and age of the binary components remarkably well, but overestimate their luminosity by up to 0.65 magnitudes, which could result in underestimations of 20% to 35% of photometric masses for directly imaged exoplanets and young-field brown dwarfs

Erratum: A detailed census of variable stars in the globular cluster NGC 6333 (M9) from CCD differential photometry

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OGLE-2015-BLG-0479LA,B: Binary Gravitational Microlens Characterized By Simultaneous Ground-Based and Space-Based Observations

We present a combined analysis of the observations of the gravitational microlensing event OGLE-2015-BLG-0479 taken both from the ground and by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The light curves seen from the ground and from space exhibit a time offset of ∼13 days between the caustic spikes, indicating that the relative lens-source positions seen from the two places are displaced by parallax effects. From modeling the light curves, we measure the space-based microlens parallax. Combined with the angular Einstein radius measured by analyzing the caustic crossings, we determine the mass and distance of the lens. We find that the lens is a binary composed of two G-type stars with masses of ∼1.0M⊙ and ∼0.9M⊙ located at a distance of ∼3 kpc. In addition, we are able to constrain the complete orbital parameters of the lens thanks to the precise measurement of the microlens parallax derived from the joint analysis. In contrast to the binary event OGLE-2014-BLG-1050, which was also observed by Spitzer, we find that the interpretation of OGLE-2015-BLG-0479 does not suffer from the degeneracy between (±, ±) and (±, ∓) solutions, confirming that the four-fold parallax degeneracy in single-lens events collapses into the two-fold degeneracy for the general case of binary-lens events. The location of the blend in the color–magnitude diagram is consistent with the lens properties, suggesting that the blend is the lens itself. The blend is bright enough for spectroscopy and thus this possibility can be checked from future follow-up observations