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A Substellar Mass Function for Alpha Per

David Barrado y Navascues·Jerome Bouvier·John R. Stauffer·Nicolas Lodieu·Mark J. McCaughrean
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Abstract

We present a deep, wide-field optical survey of the young stellar cluster Alpha Per, in which we have discovered a large population of candidate brown dwarfs. Subsequent infrared photometric follow-up shows that the majority of them are probable or possible members of the cluster, reaching to a minimum mass of 0.035 Msun. We have used this list of members to derive the luminosity and mass functions of the substellar population of the cluster (alpha=0.59+-0.05) and compared its slope to the value measure for the Pleiades. This comparison indicates that the two cluster mass functions are, indeed, very similar.

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David Barrado y Navascues, Jerome Bouvier, John R. Stauffer, Nicolas Lodieu, Mark J. McCaughrean. 2002-09-02. A Substellar Mass Function for Alpha Per. https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361%3A20021262

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