Detection and Characterization of Brown Dwarfs and Free-floating Planets

University Of Hawaii, Honolulu

Investigators

Abstract

AST-0205862 PI Martin This is a research project to discover and characterize very low-luminosity substellar objects. The search will take place in several nearby young stellar associations and open clusters with ages ranging from 1 to 120~Myr, and in high galactic latitude fields. Brown dwarf and free-floating planet candidates will be identified using deep multi-color CCD photometry. Near-infrared photometry and spectroscopy will provide crucial information on the nature of the objects. These observations will increase significantly the sample of known brown dwarfs. Hence, this new field of research will be put on a more firm statistical basis. The relative numbers of brown dwarfs and free planets in a given association, cluster and the field will allow the determination of luminosity functions and mass functions in the substellar regime for a variety of environmental conditions. Follow-up studies, such as disk accretion for very low-mass primaries, binarity, rotation, and weather-like variability will be carried out by Martin and others. ***