Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0607490

From: Inseok Song [view email]

Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:50:27 GMT (242kb)

HST NICMOS Imaging of the Planetary-mass Companion to the Young Brown Dwarf 2MASS J1207334-393254

Authors: Inseok Song, G. Schneider, B. Zuckerman, J. Farihi, E. E. Becklin, M. S. Bessell, P. Lowrance, B. A. Macintosh

Comments: 18 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Accepted in ApJ

Multi-band (0.9 to 1.6 um) images of the TW Hydrae Association (TWA) brown dwarf, 2MASS J1207334-393254 (also known as 2M1207), and its candidate planetary mass companion (2M1207b) were obtained on 2004 Aug 28 and 2005 Apr 26 with HST/NICMOS. The images from these two epochs unequivocally confirm the two objects as a common proper motion pair (16.0 sigma confidence). A new measurement of the proper motion of 2M1207 implies a distance to the system of 59+-7 pc and a projected separation of 46+-5 AU. The NICMOS and previously published VLT photometry of 2M1207b, extending overall from 0.9 to 3.8 um, are fully consistent with an object of a few Jupiter masses at the canonical age of a TWA member (~8 Myr) based on evolutionary models of young giant planets. These observations provide information on the physical nature of 2M1207b and unambiguously establish that the first direct image of a planetary mass companion in orbit around a self-luminous body, other than our Sun, has been secured.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0607490