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Issue A&A
Volume 433, Number 2, April II 2005
Page(s) L33 - L36
Section Letters
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:200500098



A&A 433, L33-L36 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:200500098

Letter

HST/NICMOS observations of a proto-brown dwarf candidate

D. Apai1, 2, 3, L. V. Tóth1, 4, 5, T. Henning1, R. Vavrek6, Z. Kovács1 and D. Lemke1

1  Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
    e-mail: apai@as.arizona.edu
2  Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
3  NASA Astrobiology Institute
4  Department of Astronomy of the Loránd Eötvös University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1, 1117 Budapest, Hungary
5  Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, PO Box 67, 1525 Budapest, Hungary
6  Astrophysics Missions Division, ESTEC, Keplerlann 1, Norwijk 2201, The Netherlands

(Received 6 December 2004 / Accepted 18 February 2005 )

Abstract
We present deep HST/NICMOS observations peering through the outflow cavity of the protostellar candidate IRAS 04381+2540 in the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1. A young stellar object as central source, a jet and a very faint and close (0.6'') companion are identified. The primary and the companion have similar colours, consistent with strong reddening. We argue that the companion is neither a shock-excited knot nor a background star. The colour/magnitude information predicts a substellar upper mass limit for the companion, but the final confirmation will require spectroscopic information. Because of its geometry, young age and its rare low-mass companion, this system is likely to provide a unique insight into the formation of brown dwarfs.


Key words: binaries: close -- planetary systems: protoplanetary disks -- stars: formation -- stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs -- stars: pre-main sequence

SIMBAD Objects



© ESO 2005


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