Letter to the Editor

A benchmark companion at the hydrogen-burning limit imaged in the core cluster of the Fornax-Horologium association

¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
² SUPA, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
³ Centre for Exoplanet Science, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
⁴ Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets, Université de Montréal, Montréal, H3C 3J7 Québec, Canada
⁵ Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H4, Canada
⁶ School of Natural Sciences, Centre for Astronomy, University of Galway, Galway H91 CF50, Ireland

^⋆ Corresponding author; pengyu.liu@ed.ac.uk

Received: 14 February 2025
Accepted: 21 March 2025

Abstract

Context. Low-mass stellar and substellar companions are indispensable objects for verifying evolutionary models that transition from low-mass stars to planets. Their formation is likely also affected by the surrounding stellar environment. The Fornax-Horologium (FH) association is a recently classified young association in the solar neighbourhood with a dissolving open cluster in its centre. It has not been searched widely for substellar companions and exoplanets with direct imaging.

Aims. We search for companions of stars in the FH and investigate the formation and evolution of companions during the expansion and dissolution of a star cluster.

Methods. We conduct a direct-imaging survey of 49 stars in FH with VLT/SPHERE.

Results. We present HD 24121B, a companion at the hydrogen-burning limit that orbits star HD 24121 in the core cluster of the FH. The companion is located at a projected angular separation of 2.082 ± 0.004 arcsec from the central star and has contrasts of ΔH2 = 5.07 ± 0.05 mag and ΔH3 = 4.98 ± 0.05 mag. We estimate a photometric mass of 74.9 ± 7.5 M_J for HD 24121B, which places it at the boundary of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars. It is a new benchmark object for evolutionary models at the hydrogen-burning boundary, especially at the age of 30–40 Myr. Orbital fitting with joint Gaia and SPHERE relative astrometry found a high eccentricity for HD 24121B. This suggests that it may have undergone dynamic scattering. Future chemical composition measurements such as high-resolution spectroscopic observations will provide more clues on its formation history.