W0830: an extremely cold, missing-link planetary-mass object at the low-mass end of the IMF
Abstract
Here we present an extremely cold, planetary-mass brown dwarf which bridges the temperature gap between the warmer Y dwarf population and the coldest brown dwarf ever discovered. W0830 was identified through the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science collaboration, which brings together over 150,000 people around the world in identifying cold, fast-moving sources through coadded WISE images. We have characterized this object with Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescope follow-up photometry. The available evidence points to a ~Y1 source at Teff ~ 350 K with a planetary mass of 4-13Mjup, as extrapolated from the known Y dwarf population. This object joins a small, yet growing sample of "missing link" objects connecting brown dwarfs to giant planets in terms of temperature.
- Publication:
-
The 20.5th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun (CS20.5)
- Pub Date:
- March 2021
- DOI:
- 10.5281/zenodo.4567571
- Bibcode:
- 2021csss.confE.250B
- Keywords:
-
- Very low mass stars;
- Brown dwarfs;
- Y dwarfs;
- Hubble Space Telescope;
- Spitzer Space Telescope;
- Citizen Science