1. Brown Dwarf Stars By: Katie Leonard

2. What are brown dwarfs? Sub-stellar objects with mass below that necessary to maintain H- burning nuclear fusion reactions in their core, but which have fully convective surfaces and interiors, with no chemical differentiation by depth. Also called failed stars Brown dwarfs larger than 13M J burn deuterium and larger than 65M J burn lithium

5. Why are Brown Dwarfs Interesting? Star/planet formation The missing mass Pushing the observational limit Better understanding of degenerate bodies

6. Basic Facts mass < 80M J (.08 solar masses) ρ: 10-1000 gm/cm 3 Core density and pressure: Polytropic equation of state: P = K ρ 5/3 Main thermonuclear reactions: Core temperature:

7. Formation protostars less than.08 solar masses cannot trigger H thermonuclear fusion in core Contraction is stopped by electron degeneracy pressure Typical temperature: T c ~210 6 K

9. Structure Generally have same chemical composition at all depths Made predominantly of liquid metallic H and He Convective at all depths

10. Differentiation

12. Brown Dwarf or Low Mass Star? Lithium test: Low mass stars quickly deplete their lithium Methane: Older brown dwarfs are sometimes cool enough that over very long periods of time their atmospheres can gather observable quantities of methane Luminosity: brown dwarfs cool and darken steadily over their lifetimes

13. Brown Dwarf or planet? Fusion: high mass brown dwarfs can fuse deuterium Density: brown dwarfs will have much more mass in approximately the same radius X-ray and infrared: some emit x-rays and all emit infrared until they cool to temperatures of planets

14. Where do we look for brown dwarfs? Companions Open Clusters Wide Field

15. First Brown Dwarf Discoverd ~35M J 6.3pc away Confirmed using methane test

16. Searches for Single Objects Proper motion surveys Optical and infrared color surveys Gravitational microlensing

17. Searches in Young Clusters Objects will more luminous and close to the same age Easier to assign masses But distance increases

18. Searching for Companions Direct photography Astrometric perturbation analyses Spectroscopic measurements

19. Only Known Brown Dwarf to have a Planet Orbiting it 2M1207b orbits 2M1207 Discovered in 2004

20. Death Surfaces cool from 3,500k to 1,500k Methane builds up Fade and cool to become black dwarfs

21. References http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://astro.berkeley.edu/~stars/bdwarfs/ http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/mbate/Cluster/pr.html http://www.news.wisc.edu/12290 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0323_060323_brown_dwarf.html http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/mbate/Cluster/pr.html http://www.harmsy.freeuk.com/bld.html http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec13.html http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=5665 http://www.keckobservatory.org/view_album.php?album_id=5 http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/twa5b/more.html

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