A Candidate Substellar Companion to CD -33°7795 (TWA 5)
Abstract
We present the discovery of a candidate substellar object in a survey of young stars in the solar vicinity using the sensitivity and spatial resolution afforded by the NICMOS coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The H=12.1 mag object was discovered approximately 2" from the TW Hydrae association member CD -33°7795 (TWA 5), and the photometry implies a spectral type M8-M8.5, with a temperature of ~2600 K. We estimate that the probability of a chance alignment with a background object of this nature is less than 2×10-5 and therefore postulate that the object (TWA 5B) is physically associated at a projected separation of 100 AU. Given the likely youth of the primary (~10 Myr), current brown dwarf cooling models predict a mass of ~20MJup for TWA 5B.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- February 1999
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/9812187
- Bibcode:
- 1999ApJ...512L..69L
- Keywords:
-
- STARS: LOW-MASS;
- BROWN DWARFS;
- Stars: Low-Mass;
- Brown Dwarfs;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- LATEX, 10 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters