SIMBAD references

2019MNRAS.486.2254D - Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc., 486, 2254-2264 (2019/June-3)

Hunting for brown dwarfs in the globular cluster M4: second epoch HST NIR observations.

DIEBALL A., BEDIN L.R., KNIGGE C., GEFFERT M., RICH R.M., DOTTER A., RICHER H. and ZUREK D.

Abstract (from CDS):

We present an analysis of the second epoch Hubble Space TelescopeWide Field Camera 3 F110W near-infrared (NIR) imaging data of the globular cluster M 4. The new data set suggests that one of the previously suggested four brown dwarf candidates in this cluster is indeed a high-probability cluster member. The position of this object in the NIR colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) is in the white dwarf/brown dwarf area. The source is too faint to be a low-mass main-sequence (MS) star, but, according to theoretical considerations, also most likely somewhat too bright to be a bona-fide brown dwarf. Since we know that the source is a cluster member, we determined a new optical magnitude estimate at the position the source should have in the optical image. This new estimate places the source closer to the white dwarf sequence in the optical-NIR CMD and suggests that it might be a very cool (Teff <= 4500 K) white dwarf at the bottom of the white dwarf cooling sequence in M 4, or a white dwarf/brown dwarf binary. We cannot entirely exclude the possibility that the source is a very massive, bright brown dwarf, or a very low-mass MS star, however, we conclude that we still have not convincingly detected a brown dwarf in a globular cluster, but we expect to be very close to the start of the brown dwarf cooling sequence in this cluster. We also note that the MS ends at F110W ≃ 22.5 mag in the proper-motion cleaned CMDs, where completeness is still high.

Abstract Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society

Journal keyword(s): brown dwarfs - Hertzsprung-Russell and colour-magnitude diagrams - stars: low-mass - globular clusters: individual: M 4

Simbad objects: 6

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