Serendipitous Discovery and Parallax of a Nearby L Dwarf

A field star serendipitously observed in a parallax program proved to have a proper motion of 562 mas yr^-1 and a parallax of 82+/-2 mas. The star is identified with 2MASS J07003664+3157266. A Keck LRIS spectrum shows its spectral type to be L3.5, as expected from its infrared and optical colors and absolute magnitude. This object had not been previously recognized as an L dwarf, perhaps because of crowding at its relatively low Galactic latitude (b=+15.8d).

Based in part on observations obtained at the Michigan-Dartmouth-MIT Observatory.