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Investigating Brown Dwarf Variability at 3.4 & 4.6 Microns with AllWISE Multi-Epoch Photometry

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 نشر من قبل Gregory Mace
 تاريخ النشر 2014
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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 تأليف Gregory Mace




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Multi-epoch photometry from AllWISE provides the opportunity to investigate variability at 3.4 and 4.6 microns for most known brown dwarfs. WISE observed the same patch of sky repeatedly and within a days time, roughly 12 observations were obtained on a given patch of sky; then, another 12 were obtained roughly six months later when that patch of sky was again in view. For most of the sky, AllWISE contains two separate epochs of about a dozen observations each, although ~30% of the sky has three such epochs available in AllWISE. With the AllWISE multi-epoch photometry of ~1500 known M, L, T, and Y dwarfs, I computed the Stetson J Index and quantified variability as a function of spectral type. I found that the average single-exposure photometric uncertainty in AllWISE (~0.2 magnitudes) is too large to robustly identify flux variability smaller than ~20%. However, multi-epoch photometry from AllWISE remains a useful resource in cases where flux variability is known to be present with large amplitudes, or for bright nearby objects with lower photometric uncertainties.



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