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A Candidate Substellar Companion to CoD -33 7795 (TWA 5)

P. J. Lowrance, C. McCarthy, E. E. Becklin, B. Zuckerman, G. Schneider, R. A. Webb, D. C. Hines, J. D. Kirkpatrick, D. W. Koerner, F. Low, R. Meier, M. Rieke, B. A. Smith, R. J. Terrile, R. I. Thompson

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9812187

Abstract

We present the discovery of a candidate substellar object in a survey of young stars in the solar vicinity using the sensitivity and spatial resolution afforded by the NICMOS coronagraph on the Hubble Space Telescope. The H=12.1 mag object was discovered approximately 2 arcsec from the TW Hydrae Association member CoD -33 7795 (TWA 5), and the photometry implies a spectral type M8-M8.5, with a temperature of approximately 2600K. We estimate that the probability of a chance alignment with a background objectof this nature is < 2 X 10(-5), and therefore postulate the object (TWA 5B) is physically associated at a projected separation of 100 AU. Given the likely youth of the primary (~ 10 Myr), current brown dwarf cooling models predict a mass of approximately 20 Jupiter masses for TWA 5B.

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