Issue |
A&A
Volume 383, Number 3, MarchI 2002
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | L15 - L18 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20020034 | |
Published online | 15 March 2002 |
Letter to the Editor
Discovery of the first young brown dwarf in the Serpens cluster*
1
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
2
CESR CNRS-UPS, BP 4346, 31028 Toulouse Cedex 04, France
3
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique, Observatoire de Grenoble, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble, Cedex 09, France
4
Institut Universitaire de France
Corresponding author: N. Lodieu, nlodieu@aip.de
Received:
10
December
2001
Accepted:
8
January
2002
In this letter, we report the discovery of the first young early
L-dwarf in the Serpens cloud. It is obscured by more than ten magnitudes
of visual absorption and was found during a near infrared (NIR) photometric
survey of a 50 square arcmin area in the Serpens cloud, deep enough to
probe the substellar domain. After selection from NIR colour-magnitude and
colour-colour diagrams, its substellar nature has been confirmed by NIR
spectroscopy at the VLT. We estimate the mass of this brown dwarf to be
~0.05 and its age to be ~3.5 Myr. From its NIR indices, we estimate its present spectral type to be L0–L3, and using a
model its future spectral type to be T. This is the first young brown
dwarf ever found deeply embedded in a star formation region.
Key words: stars: formation / stars: pre-main sequence / stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs / infrared: stars / techniques: photometric / techniques: spectroscopic
© ESO, 2002
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