THE FIRST HUNDRED BROWN DWARFS DISCOVERED BY THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER (WISE)

By J. D. Kirkpatrick, M. Cushing, C. Gelino, R. Griffith, M. Skrutskie, Kenneth A. Marsh, E. L. Wright, A. Mainzer, Peter Eisenhardt, I. McLean and 30 more. 2011

342 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present ground-based spectroscopic verification of 6 Y dwarfs (see also Cushing et al.), 89 T dwarfs, 8 L dwarfs, and 1 M dwarf identified by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Eighty of these are cold brown dwarfs with spectral types ⩾T6, six of which have been announced earlier by Mainzer et al. and Burgasser et al. We present color–color and color–type diagrams showing the locus of M, L, T, and Y dwarfs in WISE color space. Near-infrared and, in a few cases, optical spectra are presented for these discoveries. Near-infrared classifications as late as early Y are presented and objects with peculiar spectra are discussed. Using these new discoveries, we are also able to extend the optical T dwarf classification scheme from T8 to T9. After deriving an absolute WISE 4.6 μm (W2) magnitude versus spectral type relation, we estimate spectrophotometric distances to our discoveries. We also use available astrometric measurements to provide preliminary trigonometric parallaxes to four of our discoveries, which have types of L9 pec (red), T8, T9, and Y0; all of these lie within 10 pc of the Sun. The Y0 dwarf, WISE 1541−2250, is the closest at 2.8+1.3−0.6 pc; if this 2.8 pc value persists after continued monitoring, WISE 1541−2250 will become the seventh closest stellar system to the Sun. Another 10 objects, with types between T6 and >Y0, have spectrophotometric distance estimates also placing them within 10 pc. The closest of these, the T6 dwarf WISE 1506+7027, is believed to fall at a distance of ∼4.9 pc. WISE multi-epoch positions supplemented with positional info primarily from the Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera allow us to calculate proper motions and tangential velocities for roughly one-half of the new discoveries. This work represents the first step by WISE to complete a full-sky, volume-limited census of late-T and Y dwarfs. Using early results from this census, we present preliminary, lower limits to the space density of these objects and discuss constraints on both the functional form of the mass function and the low-mass limit of star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ec34628b0d1eee67a4a0a0d10ce703849c34a21

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michael C. Liu
2. T. Dupuy
3. A. Burgasser
4. K. Luhman
5. M. Marley
6. J. D. Kirkpatrick
7. Kelle Cruz
8. K. Allers

In Instrumentation

1. Michael C. Liu
2. T. Dupuy
3. A. Burgasser
4. J. D. Kirkpatrick
5. K. Luhman
6. K. Allers
7. Kelle Cruz
8. M. Marley

Citations in the corpus

• THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. II. YOUNG ULTRACOOL FIELD DWARFS (2016, background): “…ever lower masses and temperatures, in large part thanks to wide-area digital sky surveys sensitive to such cool objects (e.g. Delfosse et al. 1999; Kirkpatrick et al. 1999; Chiu et al. 2006; Burningham et al. 2010; Reylé et al. 2010; Liu et al. 2011b; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Best et al. 2015).”
• THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. I. ULTRACOOL BINARIES AND THE L/T TRANSITION, (2012, methodology): “…et al. (1999); (53) Kirkpatrick et al. (2000); (54) Kirkpatrick et al. (2001a); (55) Kirkpatrick et al. (2001b); (56) Kirkpatrick et al. (2008); (57) Kirkpatrick et al. (2011); (58) Knapp et al. (2004); (59) Leggett (1992); (60) Leggett et al. (2007); (61) Leggett et al. (2010); (62) Leggett…”
• IDENTIFICATION OF 1.4 MILLION ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE MID-INFRARED USING WISE DATA (2015, methodology): “%) fall within the combined Kirkpatrick et al. (2011) criterion.”
• DISCOVERY OF A BINARY BROWN DWARF AT 2 pc FROM THE SUN (2013, background): “For comparison, I have included a sample of known M, L, and T dwarfs (Leggett et al. 2010; Kirkpatrick et al. 2011, 2012, http://DwarfArchives.org).”
• FURTHER DEFINING SPECTRAL TYPE “Y” AND EXPLORING THE LOW-MASS END OF THE FIELD BROWN DWARF MASS FUNCTION (2012, methodology): “This query attempts to improve upon the search we used earlier (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011) and is aimed toward identifying mid-T or later brown dwarfs for further follow-up.”
• CHARACTERIZING THE MID-INFRARED EXTRAGALACTIC SKY WITH WISE AND SDSS (2012, background): “Here we do not see any extremely cool brown dwarfs with very red W1−W2 color due to methane absorption since such sources are very faint in W3, and thus are excluded in our W1/2/3 sample (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011).”
• A T8.5 BROWN DWARF MEMBER OF THE ξ URSAE MAJORIS SYSTEM (2012, methodology): “70+312537.9, hereafter WISE 1118+31, easily meets the WISE brown dwarf color selection criterion (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011) with a W1-W2 color of 2.85 compared to a selection threshold of 2.0.”
• The Formation and Early Evolution of Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs (2012, methodology): “Brown dwarfs at Teff ∼< 300 K are particularly valuable since their numbers are sensitive to minimum masses of the IMF in the range of 5–10 MJup (Burgasser 2004, Kirkpatrick et al. 2011).”
• NEGLECTED CLOUDS IN T AND Y DWARF ATMOSPHERES (2012, background): “As missions like WISE find colder objects (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011; Cushing et al. 2011) and these objects are observed spectroscopically, future models of brown dwarfs will need to include the condensation of these more volatile clouds.”
• DIRECT IMAGING OF A COLD JOVIAN EXOPLANET IN ORBIT AROUND THE SUN-LIKE STAR GJ 504 (2013, background): “Even under optimistic assumptions about the brown dwarf mass function (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), less than one such object exists per 10 deg2, and the probability of a chance alignment within 3′′ of GJ 504 is no more than 10−7.”
• FUNDAMENTAL PARAMETERS AND SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS OF YOUNG AND FIELD AGE OBJECTS WITH MASSES SPANNING THE STELLAR TO PLANETARY REGIME (2015, background): “…Luyten (1979b), (41) Phan-Bao et al. (2003), (42) Cruz et al. (2004a), (43) This work, (44) Fan et al. (2000), (45) Golimowski et al. (2004), (46) Kirkpatrick et al. (2011), (47) Bonnefoy et al. (2014), (48) Deacon et al. (2005), (49) Looper et al. (2007), (50) Burgasser et al. (2010a), (51)…”
• The Field Substellar Mass Function Based on the Full-sky 20 pc Census of 525 L, T, and Y Dwarfs (2020, methodology): “The near-infrared spectrum shown by Kirkpatrick et al. (2011) has low S/N in the K-band and may show the flux suppression typical of T subdwarfs, but an improved spectrum is needed to verify this.”
• A STUDY OF THE DIVERSE T DWARF POPULATION REVEALED BY WISE (2013, methodology): “In Section 2 we discuss our photometric selection criteria and present WISE All-Sky photometry for all the objects in Kirkpatrick et al. (2011) and the new brown dwarfs presented here.”
• WEATHER ON OTHER WORLDS. II. SURVEY RESULTS: SPOTS ARE UBIQUITOUS ON L AND T DWARFS (2014, background): “First, given typical 3–5 µm absolute magnitudes and colors of L5 and T5 dwarfs from WISE (Kirkpatrick et al. 2011), the secondary is ≈1.5 mag redder in [3.6] − [4.5] than the primary and also ≈1.5 mag fainter at [4.5].”
• BANYAN. VII. A NEW POPULATION OF YOUNG SUBSTELLAR CANDIDATE MEMBERS OF NEARBY MOVING GROUPS FROM THE BASS SURVEY (2015, methodology): “Kirkpatrick et al. (2011) noted that their measurement is only a gross underestimation on the space density of Y-type dwarfs due to several biases.”