@article{4d626bd31e904fb19ee91d6365548f9f,
title = "The discovery of a second field methane brown dwarf from sloan digital sky survey commissioning data",
abstract = "We report the discovery of a second field methane brown dwarf from the commissioning data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The object, SDSS J134646.45-003150.4 (hereafter SDSS 1346-00), was selected because of its very red color and stellar appearance. Its spectrum between 0.8 and 2.5 μm is dominated by strong absorption bands of H2O and CH4 and closely mimics those of Gliese 229B and SDSS 162414.37+002915.6 (hereafter SDSS 1624+00), two other known methane brown dwarfs. SDSS 1346-00 is approximately 1.5 mag fainter than Gliese 229B, suggesting that it lies about 11 pc from the Sun. The ratio of flux at 2.1 μm to that at 1.27 μm is larger for SDSS 1346-00 than for Gliese 229B and SDSS 1624+00, which suggests that SDSS 1346-00 has a slightly higher effective temperature than the others. Based on a search area of 130 deg2 and a detection limit of z* = 19.8, we estimate a space density of 0.05 pc-3 for methane brown dwarfs with Teff ∼ 1000 K in the 40 pc3 volume of our search. This estimate is based on small-sample statistics and should be treated with appropriate caution.",
keywords = "Stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs, Surveys",
author = "Tsvetanov, {Zlatan I.} and Golimowski, {David A.} and Wei Zheng and Geballe, {T. R.} and Leggett, {S. K.} and Ford, {Holland C.} and Davidsen, {Arthur F.} and Alan Uomoto and Xiaohui Fan and Knapp, {G. R.} and Strauss, {Michael A.} and J. Brinkmann and Lamb, {D. Q.} and Newberg, {Heidi Jo} and Ron Rechenmacher and Schneider, {Donald P.} and York, {Donald G.} and Lupton, {Robert H.} and Pier, {Jeffrey R.} and James Annis and Istv{\'a}n Csabai and Hindsley, {Robert B.} and {\v Z}eljko Ivesi{\'c} and Munn, {Jeffrey A.} and Thakar, {Aniruddha R.} and Patrick Waddell",
note = "Funding Information: The SDSS19 is a joint project of the University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Princeton University, the US Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington. Apache Point Observatory, site of the SDSS, is operated by the Astrophysical Research Consortium. Funding for the project has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the SDSS member institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, and the Ministry of Education of Japan. We also thank Karen Gloria for her expert assistance at the Apache Point Observatory. UKIRT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. We are grateful to the staff of UKIRT for its support, to A. J. Adamson for use of UKIRT Director{\textquoteright}s time, and to Tom Kerr for obtaining the medium-resolution J-band spectrum.",
year = "2000",
month = mar,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1086/312515",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "531",
pages = "L61--L65",
journal = "Astrophysical Journal",
issn = "0004-637X",
publisher = "IOP Publishing Ltd.",
number = "1 PART 2",
}