DISCOVERY OF A LOW-MASS COMPANION AROUND HR 3549
- Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Boulevard, MC 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Physics Building, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL (United Kingdom)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
We report the discovery of a low-mass companion to HR 3549, an A0V star surrounded by a debris disk with a warm excess detected by WISE at 22 μm (10σ significance). We imaged HR 3549 B in the L band with NAOS-CONICA, the adaptive optics infrared camera of the Very Large Telescope, in January 2013 and confirmed its common proper motion in 2015 January. The companion is at a projected separation of ≃80 AU and position angle of ≃157°, so it is orbiting well beyond the warm disk inner edge of r > 10 AU. Our age estimate for this system corresponds to a companion mass in the range 15–80 M{sub J}, spanning the brown dwarf regime, and so HR 3549 B is another recent addition to the growing list of brown dwarf desert objects with extreme mass ratios. The simultaneous presence of a warm disk and a brown dwarf around HR 3549 provides interesting empirical constraints on models of the formation of substellar companions.
- OSTI ID:
- 22525339
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 811, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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