Free access article

A&A 439, L19-L22 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200500149

Letter

Discovery of a widely separated binary system of very low mass stars

N. Phan-Bao¹, E. L. Martín^{2, 3}, C. Reylé⁴, T. Forveille^{5, 6} and J. Lim<sup>1

1</sup>  Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, PO Box 23-141, Taipei 106, ROC, Taiwan
    e-mail: pbngoc@asiaa.sinica.edu.tw
²  Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ vía Láctea s/n, 38200 La Laguna (Tenerife), Spain
³  University of Central Florida, Dept. of Physics, PO Box 162385, Orlando, FL 32816-2385, USA
⁴  CNRS UMR6091, Observatoire de Besançon, BP 1615, 25010 Besançon Cedex, France
⁵  Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation, 65-1238 Mamalahoa Highway, Kamuela, HI 96743, USA
⁶  Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, Université J. Fourier, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble, France

(Received 3 June 2005 / Accepted 3 July 2005 )

Abstract
We report our discovery of a nearby wide binary system, LP 714-37 AB. Phan-Bao et al. identified LP 714-37 as a mid-M dwarf during a cross-identification of the NLTT and DENIS catalogues. Our CCD images resolve the system into a binary with a projected angular separation of 1.8´´, or 33 AU, and low-resolution optical spectra give spectral types of M5.5 (LP 714-37A) and M7.5 (LP 714-37B). This makes LP 714-37 AB one of very few widely separated (separation >30 AU) very low-mass binary systems known in the field, and we discuss it in the context of the multiplicity properties of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs.

Key words: binary stars -- very low mass stars, brown dwarfs -- individual star: DENIS-P J0410-1251, LP 714-37

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