New ultracool dwarf candidates from multi-epoch WISE data

¹ Institute of Physics, Czech Acad. Sci., 182 21 Prague 8, Czech Republic
² Institute of Astronomy, 48 Pyatnitskaya St., Moscow 119017, Russia
³ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo E. Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italy

^★ Corresponding author; karpov@fzu.cz

Received: 27 August 2024
Accepted: 12 February 2025

Abstract

Context. Thirty years after the discovery of brown dwarfs, the search for these objects continues, particularly in the vicinity of the Sun. Objects near the Sun are characterized by large proper motions, making them be seen as fast-moving objects. While the Gaia DR3 catalog is a comprehensive source of proper motions, it lacks the depth needed for discovering fainter objects. Modern multi-epoch surveys, with their greater depth, offer a new opportunity to systematically search for ultracool dwarfs.

Aims. The study aims to systematically search for high-proper-motion objects using the newly released catalog of epochal Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) data in order to identify new brown dwarf candidates in the solar neighborhood, estimate their spectral types, distances, and spatial velocities.

Methods. We used recently released unTimely catalog of epochal detections in unWISE coadds to search for objects with high proper motions using a simple motion detection algorithm, combined with machine-learning-based artifact rejection routine. This method was used to identify objects with proper motions exceeding approximately 0.3 arcseconds per year. The identified objects were then cross-referenced with data from other large-scale sky surveys to further analyze their characteristics.

Results. The search yielded 21 885 moving objects with significant proper motions, 258 of which had not been previously published. All except 6 of them are compatible with being ultracool dwarfs. Among these, at least 33 were identified as most promising new T dwarf candidates, with estimated distances of closer than about 40 parsecs, and effective temperatures of less than 1300 K.