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Register a new userIndividual, Model-Independent Masses of the Closest Known Brown Dwarf Binary to the Sun
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At a distance of 2~pc, our nearest brown dwarf neighbor, Luhman 16 AB, has been extensively studied since its discovery 3 years ago, yet its most fundamental parameter -- the masses of the individual dwarfs -- has not been constrained with precision. In this work we present the full astrometric orbit and barycentric motion of Luhman 16 AB and the first precision measurements of the individual component masses. We draw upon archival observations spanning 31 years from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Schmidt Telescope, the Deep Near-Infrared Survey of the Southern Sky (DENIS), public FORS2 data on the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and new astrometry from the Gemini South Multiconjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS). Finally, we include three radial velocity measurements of the two components from VLT/CRIRES, spanning one year. With this new data sampling a full period of the orbit, we use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm to fit a 16-parameter model incorporating mutual orbit and barycentric motion parameters and constrain the individual masses to be~$27.9^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$~$M_{J}$ for the T dwarf and~$34.2^{+1.3}_{-1.1}$~$M_{J}$ for the L dwarf. Our measurements of Luhman 16 ABs mass ratio and barycentric motion parameters are consistent with previous estimates in the literature utilizing recent astrometry only. The GeMS-derived measurements of the Luhman 16 AB separation in 2014-2015 agree closely with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurements made during the same epoch Bedin et al. 2017, and the derived mutual orbit agrees with those measurements to within the HST uncertainties of $0.3 - 0.4$ milliarcseconds.
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We present the orbit and properties of 2MASS J050051.85-093054.9, establishing it as the closest (d ~ 71 pc) extremely low mass white dwarf to the Sun. We find that this star is hydrogen-rich with Teff ~ 10 500 K, log g ~ 5.9, and, following evolutionary models, has a mass of ~ 0.17 solar masses. Independent analysis of radial velocity and TESS photometric time series reveals an orbital period of ~ 9.5 h. Its high velocity amplitude (K ~ 144 km/s) produces a measurable Doppler beaming effect in the TESS light curve with an amplitude of 1 mmag. The unseen companion is most likely a faint white dwarf. J0500-0930 belongs to a class of post-common envelope systems that will most likely merge through unstable mass transfer and in specific circumstances lead to Type Ia supernova explosions.
This paper was accidentally submitted twice to astro-ph. This version has been withdrawn -- please see astro-ph/0601440 instead.
We report the discovery of an intermediate-mass transiting brown dwarf, TOI-503b, from the TESS mission. TOI-503b is the first brown dwarf discovered by TESS and orbits a metallic-line A-type star with a period of $P=3.6772 pm 0.0001$ days. The light curve from TESS indicates that TOI-503b transits its host star in a grazing manner, which limits the precision with which we measure the brown dwarfs radius ($R_b = 1.34^{+0.26}_{-0.15} R_J$). We obtained high-resolution spectroscopic observations with the FIES, Ondv{r}ejov, PARAS, Tautenburg, and TRES spectrographs and measured the mass of TOI-503b to be $M_b = 53.7 pm 1.2 M_J$. The host star has a mass of $M_star = 1.80 pm 0.06 M_odot$, a radius of $R_star = 1.70 pm 0.05 R_odot$, an effective temperature of $T_{rm eff} = 7650 pm 160$K, and a relatively high metallicity of $0.61pm 0.07$ dex. We used stellar isochrones to derive the age of the system to be $sim$180 Myr, which places its age between that of RIK 72b (a $sim$10 Myr old brown dwarf in the Upper Scorpius stellar association) and AD 3116b (a $sim$600 Myr old brown dwarf in the Praesepe cluster). We argue that this brown dwarf formed in-situ, based on the young age of the system and the long circularization timescale for this brown dwarf around its host star. TOI-503b joins a growing number of known short-period, intermediate-mass brown dwarfs orbiting main sequence stars, and is the second such brown dwarf known to transit an A star, after HATS-70b. With the growth in the population in this regime, the driest region in the brown dwarf desert ($35-55 M_J sin{i}$) is reforesting and its mass range shrinking.
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