Discovery of a Low-mass Companion Around HR 3549
Abstract
We report the discovery of a low-mass companion to HR 3549, an A0V star surrounded by a debris disk with a warm excess detected by WISE at 22 μm (10σ significance). We imaged HR 3549 B in the L band with NAOS-CONICA, the adaptive optics infrared camera of the Very Large Telescope, in January 2013 and confirmed its common proper motion in 2015 January. The companion is at a projected separation of ≃80 AU and position angle of ≃157°, so it is orbiting well beyond the warm disk inner edge of r > 10 AU. Our age estimate for this system corresponds to a companion mass in the range 15-80 MJ, spanning the brown dwarf regime, and so HR 3549 B is another recent addition to the growing list of brown dwarf desert objects with extreme mass ratios. The simultaneous presence of a warm disk and a brown dwarf around HR 3549 provides interesting empirical constraints on models of the formation of substellar companions.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- October 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1088/0004-637X/811/2/103
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1509.05689
- Bibcode:
- 2015ApJ...811..103M
- Keywords:
-
- brown dwarfs;
- instrumentation: adaptive optics;
- instrumentation: high angular resolution;
- stars: imaging;
- stars: low-mass;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted to ApJ