Expanding the Y Dwarf Census with Spitzer Follow-up of the Coldest CatWISE Solar Neighborhood Discoveries

Meisner, Aaron M.; Caselden, Dan; Kirkpatrick, J. Davy; Marocco, F.; Gelino, Christopher R.; Cushing, Michael C.; Eisenhardt, Peter; Wright, E. L.; Faherty, Jacqueline K.; Koontz, Renata; Marchese, Elijah J.; Khalil, Mohammed; Fowler, J. W.; Schlafly, Edward F.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab6215

Cited by 41 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The median W2 magnitude of this sample is W2=15.70 mag. This is much fainter than all prior full-sky WISE motion searches except for Meisner et al (2020), which had a median W2 magnitude of W2=15.93 mag. Both Backyard Worlds and CatWISE have been able to push much fainter than previous full-sky WISE motion Figure 1.…”

Section: Spurious Candidatesmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Advanced users have created a number of custom motion search tools that expand the Backyard Worlds effort significantly beyond its presence on the Zooniverse web portal (e.g., WiseView;Caselden et al 2018) and often make use of catalog querying interfaces such as SIMBAD, IRSA, Vizier (Ochsenbein et al 2000), and the Astro Data Lab (Fitzpatrick et al 2014). See Figure 1 of Kuchner et al (2017) for an example Backyard Worlds flipbook image and Figure 1 of Meisner et al (2020) for an example WiseView image sequence.…”

Section: Backyard Worlds Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During p14299 target selection, we sought to avoid duplicating any objects already slated for Spitzer observations by the CatWISE team (Spitzer program 14034, p14034 for short; Eisenhardt et al 2020;Meisner et al 2020). The Backyard Worlds and CatWISE moving object discovery lists overlap extensively, since both projects seek to uncover faint brown dwarfs using motions spanning the combined WISE +NEOWISE time baseline.…”

Section: Spitzer Target Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although we intended to avoid duplicating any Spitzer follow-up of brown dwarf discoveries already published by the CatWISE team (Marocco et al 2019(Marocco et al , 2020Meisner et al 2020), we inadvertently targeted CWISEP 1359-4352 in p14299. We nevertheless propagate this object through our entire analysis pipeline in this work, since its p14299 Spitzer photometry is deeper than the p14034 photometry initially presented in Meisner et al (2020).…”

Section: Overlap With Previously Published Catwise Spitzermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The WISE W1 (3.4 μm) and W2 (4.6 μm) bandpasses were specifically engineered to enable the selection of ultracold brown dwarfs via their red W1−W2 colors (Mainzer et al 2011b). Including recent data from the NEOWISE mission (Mainzer et al 2011a(Mainzer et al , 2014, WISE has now surveyed the entire sky 14 times spanning almost a decade, making identification of nearby brown dwarfs based on their large apparent motions an increasingly important tool for their discovery (e.g., Kirkpatrick et al 2014Kirkpatrick et al , 2016Luhman 2014a;Scholz 2014;Schneider et al 2016;Kuchner et al 2017;Marocco et al 2019;Meisner et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spitzer Follow-up of Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project

Meisner¹,

Faherty²,

Kirkpatrick³

et al. 2020

ApJ

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We present Spitzer follow-up imaging of 95 candidate extremely cold brown dwarfs discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project, which uses visually perceived motion in multiepoch Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) images to identify previously unrecognized substellar neighbors to the Sun. We measure Spitzer [3.6]-[4.5] color to phototype our brown dwarf candidates, with an emphasis on pinpointing the coldest and closest Y dwarfs within our sample. The combination of WISE and Spitzer astrometry provides quantitative confirmation of the transverse motion of 75 of our discoveries. Nine of our motion-confirmed objects have best-fit linear motions larger than 1″ yr −1 ; our fastest-moving discovery is WISEA J155349.96+693355.2 (μ ≈ 2 15 yr −1), a possible T-type subdwarf. We also report a newly discovered wide-separation (∼400 au) T8 comoving companion to the white dwarf LSPM J0055+5948 (the fourth such system to be found), plus a candidate late T companion to the white dwarf LSR J0002+6357 at 5 5 projected separation (∼8700 au if associated). Among our motion-confirmed targets, five have Spitzer colors most consistent with spectral type Y. Four of these five have exceptionally red Spitzer colors suggesting types of Y1 or later, adding considerably to the small sample of known objects in this especially valuable low-temperature regime. Our Y dwarf candidates begin bridging the gap between the bulk of the Y dwarf population and the coldest known brown dwarf.

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Section: Spurious Candidatesmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Backyard Worlds Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Spitzer Target Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Overlap With Previously Published Catwise Spitzermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spitzer Follow-up of Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project

Meisner¹,

Faherty²,

Kirkpatrick³

et al. 2020

ApJ

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Methane emission from a cool brown dwarf

Faherty,

Burningham,

Gagné

et al. 2024

Nature

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Beyond our Solar System, aurorae have been inferred from radio observations of isolated brown dwarfs1,2. Within our Solar System, giant planets have auroral emission with signatures across the electromagnetic spectrum including infrared emission of H3+ and methane. Isolated brown dwarfs with auroral signatures in the radio have been searched for corresponding infrared features, but only null detections have been reported3. CWISEP J193518.59-154620.3. (W1935 for short) is an isolated brown dwarf with a temperature of approximately 482 K. Here we report James Webb Space Telescope observations of strong methane emission from W1935 at 3.326 μm. Atmospheric modelling leads us to conclude that a temperature inversion of approximately 300 K centred at 1–10 mbar replicates the feature. This represents an atmospheric temperature inversion for a Jupiter-like atmosphere without irradiation from a host star. A plausible explanation for the strong inversion is heating by auroral processes, although other internal and external dynamical processes cannot be ruled out. The best-fitting model rules out the contribution of H3+ emission, which is prominent in Solar System gas giants. However, this is consistent with rapid destruction of H3+ at the higher pressure where the W1935 emission originates4.

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A search for millimeter emission from the coldest and closest brown dwarf with ALMA

Petry

Ivanov

2020

A&A

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Context. WISE J085510.83−071442.5 (W0855) is a unique object: with Teff ≈ 250 K it is the coldest known brown dwarf (BD), located at only ≈2.2 pc form the Sun. It is extremely faint, which makes any astronomical observations difficult. However, at least one remotely similar ultra-low-mass object, the M9 dwarf TVLM 513-46546, has been shown to be a steady radio emitter at frequencies up to 95 GHz with superimposed active states where strong, pulsed emission is observed. Aims. Our goal is to determine the millimeter radio properties of W0855 with deep observations around 93 GHz (3.2 mm) in order to investigate whether radio astrometry of this object is feasible and to measure or set an upper limit on its magnetic field. Methods. We observed W0855 for 94 min at 85.1–100.9 GHz on 24 December 2019 using 44 of the Atacama Large millimeter Array (ALMA) 12 m antennas. We used the standard ALMA calibration procedure and created the final image for our analysis by accommodating the Quasar 3C 209, the brightest nearby object by far. Furthermore, we created a light curve with a 30 s time resolution to search for pulsed emission. Results. Our observations achieve a noise RMS of 7.3 μJy beam−1 for steady emission and of 88 μJy for 30 s pulses in the aggregated bandwidth (Stokes I). There is no evidence for steady or pulsed emission from the object at the time of the observation. We derive 3σ upper limits of 21.9 μJy on the steady emission and of 264 μJy on the pulsed emission of W0855 between 85 GHz and 101 GHz. Conclusions. Together with the recent non-detection of W0855 at 4–8 GHz, our constraints on the steady and pulsed emission from W0855 confirm that the object is neither radio-loud nor magnetospherically particularly active.

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Expanding the Y Dwarf Census with Spitzer Follow-up of the Coldest CatWISE Solar Neighborhood Discoveries

Cited by 41 publications

References 66 publications

Spitzer Follow-up of Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project

Spitzer Follow-up of Extremely Cold Brown Dwarfs Discovered by the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 Citizen Science Project

Methane emission from a cool brown dwarf

A search for millimeter emission from the coldest and closest brown dwarf with ALMA

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