Weather on the Nearest Brown Dwarfs: Resolved Simultaneous Multi-wavelength Variability Monitoring of WISE J104915.57-531906.1AB
Abstract
We present two epochs of MPG/ESO 2.2 m GROND simultaneous six-band (r'i'z' JHK) photometric monitoring of the closest known L/T transition brown dwarf binary WISE J104915.57-531906.1AB. We report here the first resolved variability monitoring of both the T0.5 and L7.5 components. We obtained 4 hr of focused observations on the night of 2013 April 22 (UT), as well as 4 hr of defocused (unresolved) observations on the night of 2013 April 16 (UT). We note a number of robust trends in our light curves. The r' and i' light curves appear to be anti-correlated with z' and H for the T0.5 component and in the unresolved light curve. In the defocused dataset, J appears correlated with z' and H and anti-correlated with r' and i', while in the focused dataset we measure no variability for J at the level of our photometric precision, likely due to evolving weather phenomena. In our focused T0.5 component light curve, the K band light curve displays a significant phase offset relative to both H and z'. We argue that the measured phase offsets are correlated with atmospheric pressure probed at each band, as estimated from one-dimensional atmospheric models. We also report low-amplitude variability in i' and z' intrinsic to the L7.5 component.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- November 2013
- DOI:
- 10.1088/2041-8205/778/1/L10
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1310.5144
- Bibcode:
- 2013ApJ...778L..10B
- Keywords:
-
- brown dwarfs;
- stars: low-mass;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters