A Candidate Substellar Companion to CD -33°7795 (TWA 5)

February 1999 • 1999ApJ...512L..69L

Authors • Lowrance, Patrick J. • McCarthy, Chris • Becklin, E. E. • Zuckerman, B. • Schneider, Glenn • Webb, R. A. • Hines, Dean C. • Kirkpatrick, J. Davy • Koerner, David W. • Low, Frank • Meier, Roland • Rieke, Marcia • Smith, Bradford A. • Terrile, Richard J. • Thompson, Rodger I.

Abstract • We present the discovery of a candidate substellar object in a survey of young stars in the solar vicinity using the sensitivity and spatial resolution afforded by the NICMOS coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The H=12.1 mag object was discovered approximately 2" from the TW Hydrae association member CD -33°7795 (TWA 5), and the photometry implies a spectral type M8-M8.5, with a temperature of ~2600 K. We estimate that the probability of a chance alignment with a background object of this nature is less than 2×10^-5 and therefore postulate that the object (TWA 5B) is physically associated at a projected separation of 100 AU. Given the likely youth of the primary (~10 Myr), current brown dwarf cooling models predict a mass of ~20M_Jup for TWA 5B.

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Patrick Lowrance

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