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

October 2010 • 2010MNRAS.408L..56L

Authors • Lucas, P. W. • Tinney, C. G. • Burningham, Ben • Leggett, S. K. • Pinfield, David J. • Smart, Richard • Jones, Hugh R. A. • Marocco, Federico • Barber, Robert J. • Yurchenko, Sergei N. • Tennyson, Jonathan • Ishii, Miki • Tamura, Motohide • Day-Jones, Avril C. • Adamson, Andrew • Allard, France • Homeier, Derek

Abstract • 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^-7L_solar. Using a comparison with well-studied T8.5 and T9 dwarfs we deduce T_eff = 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.

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Federico Marocco

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