Third-closest star system discovered Options

[Mongo]

Discovery of a binary brown dwarf at 2 parsecs from the Sun

With a distance of 2.0±0.15 pc, WISE 1049−5319 is the closest neighbor of the Sun that has been found in nearly a century (Henderson 1839; Barnard 1916; Adams & Joy 1917; Voˆute 1917). It is only slightly more distant than Barnard’s star, which is the second nearest known system (1.834±0.001 pc, Benedict et al. 1999). The low galactic latitude of WISE 1049−5319 (l = 5◦) is likely the reason why it was not found in previous surveys for nearby brown dwarfs, which have tended to avoid the galactic plane. Because of its proximity to the Sun, WISE 1049−5319 is a unique target for a variety of studies, such as direct imaging and radial velocity searches for planets.

Images from Welcoming the New Neighbours at the Dynamics of Cats blog.

[Holder of the Tw...]

Here is an article on this great new discovery:

Penn State report

Wikipedia contributors sure didn't waste any time getting it listed:

List of nearest stars

Update: For those of you interested in its location in the sky, it is located in the southeast corner of the constellation Vela, northwest and close to the southern cross. RA 10h 49m 16s, Dec -53 deg 19' 6". Of course, no backyard telescope has any hope of spotting it.

It is also more or less in the same general direction as our closest neighbors in Centaurus, which makes me wonder just how close this new system is to them. Three light years? Two and a half?

[stevesliva]

Huh. He was looking in WISE images for stars with large proper motion. I wonder if that was fully automated, or just him staring at flickers. I wonder mostly because I wonder what else is in that data.

[maschnitz]

He talks about how he did it, a bit, in section 2 of the paper. From the sounds of things, he automated the search. (He mentions TOPCAT and STILTS, and several WISE astrometry and photometry data products.) But he ran into difficulty with the sheer number of results of naive searches. So he focused in on just high proper motion results, with no known discoveries nearby, that were low temperature, that didn't resemble galaxies.

[Holder of the Tw...]

Decided to try and figure out an answer to what I was wondering about earlier. Assuming a sky angle of about 31 degrees between the two star systems as seen from earth (based on measures with Starry Night), some rough trigonometry gave me a distance around 3.6 light years between them, but someone probably should check my math. Since the closest previously known neighbor to "Alpha Centauri" was 4.24 to 4.37 light years away (it was us), this means WISE 1049-5319 is the newly discovered closest neighbor to that star system.

So WISE has found a new closest star system... for someone else.

[Mongo]

Fast-evolving weather for the coolest of our two new substellar neighbours

We present the results of an intense photometric monitoring in the near-infrared (~0.9 microns) with the TRAPPIST robotic telescope of the newly discovered binary brown dwarf WISE J104915.57-531906.1, the third closest system to the Sun at a distance of only 2 pc. Our twelve nights of photometric time-series reveal a quasi-periodic (P = 4.87+-0.01 h) variability with a maximal peak-peak amplitude of ~11% and strong night-to-night evolution. We attribute this variability to the rotational modulation of fast-evolving weather patterns in the atmosphere of the coolest component (~T1-type) of the binary, in agreement with the cloud fragmentation mechanism proposed to drive the spectroscopic morphologies of brown dwarfs at the L/T transition. No periodic signal is detected for the hottest component (~L8-type). For both brown dwarfs, our data allow us to firmly discard any unique transit during our observations for planets >= 2 Rearth. For orbital periods smaller than ~9.5 h, transiting planets are excluded down to an Earth-size.

[Holder of the Tw...]

Some updates on our closest brown dwarf neighbors. It appears that one of the pair may have a planetary mass companion. The possible detection is reported in this paper:

Astronomy & Astrophysics (archive)

The same authors have managed to narrow down the distance to the pair substantially, and the result is surprisingly close to the original estimate. They are 2.02 +/- 0.02 parsecs or 6.59 +/- 0.06 light years away.

And finally, originally designated as WISE 1049-5319, most everyone now seems to be settling on the name Luhman 16 for this system.

[stevesliva]

And finally, originally designated as WISE 1049-5319, most everyone now seems to be settling on the name Luhman 16 for this system.

Even reading this explanation of the name at wikipedia, I'm still not sure who Luhman is!

[Holder of the Tw...]

I'm still not sure who Luhman is!

I believe this should do:

Penn State University - Luhman

He's also made a fair number of other important brown dwarf discoveries.

[MarcF]

And first weather map of brown dwarf WISE J104915.57-531906.1B, which is informally known as Luhman 16B:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/...40129134954.htm

From the Nature paper:
"A natural explanation for the features seen in our map of Luhman 16B
is that we are directly mapping the patchy global clouds inferred to
exist from observations of multi-wavelength variability. If this is
true, the dark areas of our map represent thicker clouds that obscure
deeper, hotter parts of the atmosphere and present a higher-altitude
(and thus colder) emissive surface, whereas bright regions correspond
to holes in the upper cloud layers that provide a view of the hotter,
deeper interior."

Best regards,
Marc.

[TheAnt]

And first weather map of brown dwarf WISE J104915.57-531906.1B, which is informally known as Luhman 16B:

You beat me on that one. Yes I do read Science daily also.

There's a quite strong hint of bands in those images. But not the equatorial ones we might expect, they rather seem to go from pole to pole, perhaps it is the internal heat that cause this.
But the resolution being as low as it is, it is not possible to say for certain, yet they do say it is the rotation on its axis in the caption so I assume they have gotten good spectra and seen the shifting of the lines to determine the alignment for Luhman 16B rotation.

[john_s]

I bet the north-south elongation of the features near the equator is just an artifact of the technique- they probably just can't discriminate latitudes near the equator.

John

[ngunn]

There's a quite strong hint of bands in those images. But not the equatorial ones we might expect, they rather seem to go from pole to pole

If I understand their radial velocity technique correctly I think it would automatically yield higher resolution in longitude than in latitude.

EDIT: Once again I type too slowly!

[0101Morpheus]

I think we can all agree that there is some vigorous convection going on. Is the dark area on the top three images a storm? If it is, it's covering a significant amount of surface compared to the whole object.

This is just the start of the intense study these objects are going to receive in the near future . I think they are going to become our gold standard for brown dwarfs.

[TheAnt]

Thank you both john_s and ngunn for replying on that matter.