A Candidate Substellar Companion to HR 7329

September 2000 • 2000ApJ...541..390L

Authors • Lowrance, Patrick J. • Schneider, Glenn • Kirkpatrick, J. Davy • Becklin, E. E. • Weinberger, Alycia J. • Zuckerman, B. • Plait, Phil • Malmuth, Eliot M. • Heap, Sara R. • Schultz, A. • Smith, Bradford A. • Terrile, Richard J. • Hines, Dean C.

Abstract • We present the discovery of a candidate substellar companion from a survey of nearby young stars made with the Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The H~12 mag object was discovered approximately 4" from the young A0 V star HR 7329. Using follow-up spectroscopy from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, we derive a spectral type between M7 V and M8 V with an effective temperature of ~2600 K. We estimate that the probability of a chance alignment with a foreground dwarf star of this nature is ~10^-8, and therefore we suggest that the object (HR 7329B) is physically associated with HR 7329, with a projected separation of 200 AU. Current brown dwarf cooling models indicate a mass of less than 50 M_Jup for HR 7329B based on age estimates of <=30 Myr for HR 7329A.

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Patrick Lowrance

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