1999/05/30 by SDSS Collaboration, Xiaohui Fan, Michael A. Strauss +27 · 6 citations
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Brown dwarf #Engineering #Physics #Range (aeronautics) #Sky #Spectroscopy and Laser Applications #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/312218
published as Astrophys.J. 522 (1999) L61-L64 · Submitted to ApJ Letters. 14 pages Latex, with 3 embedded postscript figures
arxiv created 1999/05/30 · openalex publication_date 1999/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report the discovery of the coolest field dwarf yet known, selected as an unresolved object with extremely red colors from commissioning imaging data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Its spectrum from 0.8 to 2.5 μm is dominated by strong bands of H 2 O and CH 4 . Its spectrum and colors over this range are very similar to those of Gl 229B, the only other known example of a methane dwarf. It is roughly 1.2 mag fainter than Gl 229B, suggesting that it lies at a distance of ~10 pc. Such a cool object must have a mass well below the hydrogen-burning limit of 0.08 M ☉ and therefore is a genuine brown dwarf, with a probable mass in the range 0.015-0.06 M ☉ for an age range of 0.3-5 Gyr.