Physical Properties of the Coolest Brown Dwarfs

最冷的棕矮星的物理特性

• 批准号: 1518339
• 负责人: Michael Liu
• 金额: $ 46.15万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1518339&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Physical; Properties; Coolest; Brown; Dwarfs

Brown dwarfs are key laboratories for understanding the differences between the smallest stars and the largest extrasolar planets. This program will expand our understanding of the coldest known brown dwarfs through a major observational program to determine their physical properties down to about 5 times the mass of Jupiter. Undergraduate and graduate students will develop expertise in two key areas of ground-based astronomy, namely wide-field astrometry and laser guide star adaptive optics. In parallel, the PI will formalize and enhance a professional development initiative to teach graduate students the soft skills needed for long-term success. This effort is geared towards enhancing students as budding researchers, helping them navigate the complexities of academia, and increasing retention along the career pipeline.This observational program will use high-precision infrared astrometry to measure distances, and thus absolute magnitudes and luminosities, for a well-defined sample of the coolest brown dwarfs. High angular resolution adaptive optics imaging will establish the multiplicity properties of these objects and yield the coolest known binaries. Follow-up characterization of the binaries will result in resolved spectrophotometry and dynamical masses, enabling the strongest tests to date of substellar evolutionary models and ultracool atmospheres.

褐矮星是了解最小恒星和最大太阳系外行星之间差异的关键实验室。 该计划将通过一个主要的观测计划来扩大我们对已知最冷的褐矮星的理解，以确定它们的物理性质，直到木星质量的5倍左右。 本科生和研究生将在地基天文学的两个关键领域，即广域天体测量和激光引导星星自适应光学发展的专业知识。 与此同时，PI将正式制定并加强专业发展计划，以教授研究生长期成功所需的软技能。 这一努力旨在提高学生作为萌芽研究人员的能力，帮助他们驾驭学术界的复杂性，并增加沿着职业管道的保留率。这个观测项目将使用高精度红外天体测量来测量距离，从而测量绝对星等和光度，以获得定义明确的最冷棕矮星样本。 高角分辨率自适应光学成像将建立这些物体的多重性，并产生已知最酷的双星。双星的后续表征将导致解决分光光度计和动力学质量，使最强的测试，迄今为止的亚恒星演化模型和超冷大气。