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A New Population of Young Brown Dwarfs

Kelle L. Cruz·J. Davy Kirkpatrick·Adam J. Burgasser·Dagny Looper·Subhanjoy Mohanty·Lisa Prato·Jackie Faherty·Adam Solomon
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Abstract

We report the discovery of a population of late-M and L field dwarfs with unusual optical and near-infrared spectral features that we attribute to low gravity -- likely uncommonly young, low-mass brown dwarfs. Many of these new-found young objects have southerly declinations and distance estimates within 60 parsecs. Intriguingly, these are the same properties of recently discovered, nearby, intermediate-age (5-50 Myr), loose associations such as Tucana/Horologium, the TW Hydrae association, and the Beta Pictoris moving group. We describe our efforts to confirm cluster membership and to further investigate this possible new young population of brown dwarfs.

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Kelle L. Cruz, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Adam J. Burgasser, Dagny Looper, Subhanjoy Mohanty, Lisa Prato, Jackie Faherty, Adam Solomon. 2007-02-01. A New Population of Young Brown Dwarfs. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702034

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