Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 752, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/752/1/L14
Keywords
brown dwarfs; Galaxy: abundances; infrared: stars; stars: luminosity function, mass function
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Funding
- Carnegie Observatories Graduate Research Fellowship
- STFC [ST/G001774/1, ST/H002456/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/G001774/1, ST/H002456/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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We present the discovery of three late-type (>= T4.5) brown dwarfs, including a probable Y dwarf, in the WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallels (WISP) survey. We use the G141 grism spectra to determine the spectral types of the dwarfs and derive distance estimates based on a comparison with nearby T dwarfs with known parallaxes. These are the most distant spectroscopically confirmed T/Y dwarfs, with the farthest at an estimated distance of similar to 400 pc. We compare the number of cold dwarfs found in the WISP survey with simulations of the brown dwarf mass function. The number found is generally consistent with an initial stellar mass function dN/dM alpha M-alpha with alpha = 0.0-0.5, although the identification of a Y dwarf is somewhat surprising and may be indicative of either a flatter absolute magnitude/spectral-type relation than previously reported or an upturn in the number of very-late-type brown dwarfs in the observed volume.
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