posted on 2020-06-23, 16:11authored bySL Casewell, C Belardi, SG Parsons, SP Littlefair, IP Braker, JJ Hermes, J Debes, Z Vanderbosch, MR Burleigh, BT Gaensicke, VS Dhillon, TR Marsh, DE Winget, KI Winget
We present the discovery of only the third brown dwarf known to eclipse a
non-accreting white dwarf. Gaia parallax information and multi-colour
photometry confirm that the white dwarf is cool (9950$\pm$150K) and has a low
mass (0.45$\pm$0.05~MSun), and spectra and lightcurves suggest the brown dwarf
has a mass of 0.067 $\pm$0.006 MSun (70 MJup) and a spectral type of L5 $\pm$1.
The kinematics of the system show that the binary is likely to be a member of
the thick disk and therefore at least 5 Gyr old. The high cadence lightcurves
show that the brown dwarf is inflated, making it the first brown dwarf in an
eclipsing white dwarf-brown dwarf binary to be so.
History
Citation
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 497, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 3571–3580, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa1608
Author affiliation
School of Physics and Astronom
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Published in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume
497
Issue
3
Pagination
3571-3580
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP) for Royal Astronomical Society