Discovery of a close companion to the young star Haro 6-37

Abstract

We report lunar occultation (LO) and speckle interferometry observations of Haro 6-37, all carried out at lambda=2.2 microns. The main finding is the discovery of a new close companion by LO, subsequently confirmed by speckle. The two techniques yield values in excellent agreement, with 0.331 arcseconds and 181 degrees for the separation and position angle respectively. Additionally, the LO data show evidence of what might be interpreted as scattered light from the inner part of the dust disk which is known to exist around Haro 6-37 from mm-radio observations (Osterloh & Beckwith 1995). However this last conclusion is subject to some uncertainty because of possible contamination of the signal during data acquisition. LO and speckle results are in good agreement also for what concerns the brightness ratio of the newly found companion to the main component, R=0.10 or Delta K=2.5. We discuss the possible implications on the general picture of Haro 6-37, in particular for what concerns the ages of the components and the dust disk.