An optical and near infrared search for brown dwarfs in the pleiades cluster

May, 2003
9 pages
Published in:
  • Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 343 (2003) 1263
e-Print:

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Abstract: (arXiv)
We have carried out a brown dwarf search over an area of 14' x 23' near the central portion of the Pleiades open cluster in five optical and near infrared bands (i', Z, J, H, Ks) with 10 sigma detection limits of i' = 22.0, J = 20.0 and Ks = 18.5 mag. The surveyed area has large extinction in excess of Av = 3 in the Pleiades region. We detected four new brown dwarf candidates from the colour-colour (J-K, i'-J) and the colour-magnitude (J, i'-K) diagrams. We estimated their masses as 0.046 Msun down to 0.028 Msun. The least massive one is estimated to have a mass smaller than Roque 25 or int-pl-IZ-69, and maybe the lowest mass object found so far in the Pleiades cluster.
  • OPEN CLUSTERS
  • ASSOCIATIONS
  • STARS LOW-MASS