AN ALMA DISK MASS FOR THE CANDIDATE PROTOPLANETARY COMPANION TO FW TAU
- Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91101 (United States)
- Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Yi He Yuan Lu 5, Haidian Qu, Beijing 100871 (China)
- Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2611 (Australia)
- Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 3K7 (Canada)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY 10065 (United States)
We present ALMA observations of the FW Tau system, a close binary pair of M5 stars with a wide-orbit (300 AU projected separation) substellar companion. The companion is extremely faint and red in the optical and near-infrared, but boasts a weak far-infrared excess and optical/near-infrared emission lines indicative of a primordial accretion disk of gas and dust. The component-resolved 1.3 mm continuum emission is found to be associated only with the companion, with a flux (1.78 ± 0.03 mJy) that indicates a dust mass of 1-2 M {sub ⊕}. While this mass reservoir is insufficient to form a giant planet, it is more than sufficient to produce an analog of the Kepler-42 exoplanetary system or the Galilean satellites. The mass and geometry of the disk-bearing FW Tau companion remains unclear. Near-infrared spectroscopy shows deep water bands that indicate a spectral type later than M5, but substantial veiling prevents a more accurate determination of the effective temperature (and hence mass). Both a disk-bearing ''planetary-mass'' companion seen in direct light or a brown dwarf tertiary viewed in light scattered by an edge-on disk or envelope remain possibilities.
- OSTI ID:
- 22364713
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 798, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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