(NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The TESS space telescope has found a new massive brown dwarf, whose properties place it in an underexplored area “the brown dwarf desert”.
Scientists hope that further investigation of this object will help to understand exactly how such sub-stellar bodies are formed.
Brown dwarfs of a mass of 35-55 Jupiter masses located less than three astronomical units from the parent stars of the main sequence are scarce.
These bodies are also considered intermediate objects between stars and giant planets.
This phenomenon is called the desert of brown dwarfs, and it may be associated with different mechanisms for the formation of brown dwarf companions with low and high mass.
In addition, this may be due to the peculiarities of the dynamic interaction of brown dwarfs of different masses with their stars.
However, so far, scientists do not have enough observational data for such objects to understand their origin.
Now, a group of astronomers led by Caleb I. Cañas from the University of Pennsylvania reports the discovery of a new massive brown dwarf
Named TOI-2119.01, the object has become another representative of the brown dwarf desert.
It was originally found by the TESS space telescope using the transit method, and later the discovery was confirmed using ground-based telescopes.
The mass of the parent star, which became the red dwarf, is 0.53 solar masses, and the radius is 0.51 solar radius.
The brown dwarf has a brightness temperature of 2,100 Kelvin and a mass of 67 Jupiter masses. It has been classified as an early L-type dwarf with a radius of 1.11 that of Jupiter.
The orbit of TOI-2119.01 is highly elongated, the dwarf makes one orbit around the star in just 7.2 Earth days, and one revolution around its axis - in 13.2 days.
The age of the dwarf has been estimated at 0.7-5.1 billion years, while evolutionary models of brown dwarfs usually consider a period of less than one billion years of life for such objects.
Due to the fact that the exact age of TOI-2119.0 is still difficult to establish, it is ill-suited for imposing a constraint on theoretical models, so observations will continue.
In addition, there may be a third body in the system, but this is yet to be verified.
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