An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS

Triaud, Amaury H. M. J.; Burgasser, Adam Jonathan; Burdanov, Artem; Kunovac Hodžić, Vedad; Alonso, Roi; Bardalez Gagliuffi, Daniella; Delrez, Laetitia; Demory, Brice-Olivier; de Wit, Julien; Ducrot, Elsa; Hessman, Frederic V.; Husser, Tim-Oliver; Jehin, Emmanuël; Pedersen, Peter P.; Queloz, Didier; McCormac, James; Murray, Catriona; Sebastian, Daniel; Thompson, Samantha; Van Grootel, Valérie; ... (2020). An eclipsing substellar binary in a young triple system discovered by SPECULOOS. Nature astronomy, 4(7), pp. 650-657. Springer Nature 10.1038/s41550-020-1018-2

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Mass, radius and age are three of the most fundamental parameters for celestial objects, enabling insight into the evolution and internal physics of stars, brown dwarfs and planets. Brown dwarfs are hydrogen-rich objects that are unable to sustain core fusion reactions but are supported against collapse by electron degeneracy pressure. As they age, brown dwarfs cool, reducing their radius and luminosity. Young exoplanets follow a similar behaviour. Brown dwarf evolutionary models are relied upon to infer the masses, radii and ages of young brown dwarfs. Similar models are also used to infer the mass and radius of directly imaged exoplanets. Unfortunately, only sparse empirical mass, radius and age measurements are currently available, and so the models remain mostly unvalidated. Double-line eclipsing binaries provide the most direct route towards the absolute determination of the masses and radii of stars. Here we report the discovery by SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) of the 2M1510A triple system, consisting of a nearby, eclipsing, double-line brown dwarf binary and a widely separated tertiary brown dwarf companion. We find that the system is a member of Argus, a 45 ± 5 million-year-old moving group. The system’s age matches those of currently known directly imaged exoplanets so 2M1510A provides an opportunity to benchmark evolutionary models of brown dwarfs and young planets. We find that widely used evolutionary models do reproduce the mass, radius and age of the binary components remarkably well, but overestimate their luminosity by up to 0.65 magnitudes, which could result in underestimations of 20% to 35% of photometric masses for directly imaged exoplanets and young-field brown dwarfs.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

10 Strategic Research Centers > Center for Space and Habitability (CSH)
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Space Research and Planetary Sciences
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > NCCR PlanetS

UniBE Contributor:

Burgasser, Adam Jonathan, Demory, Brice-Olivier Denys

Subjects:

500 Science > 520 Astronomy
500 Science > 530 Physics

ISSN:

2397-3366

Publisher:

Springer Nature

Language:

English

Submitter:

Danielle Zemp

Date Deposited:

06 May 2020 12:18

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:33

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/s41550-020-1018-2

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.142628

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/142628

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