Detalles de publicación
PP 026130
First L-type substellar object discovered in the vicinity of the embedded cluster NGC 2023
(1) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, (2) Universidad de La Laguna, Departamento de Astrofísica (3) Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, CNRS and Université de Bordeaux (4) Institut universitaire de France (IUF) (5) Astrobiology Research Unit, Université de Liège, (6) Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (7) Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Western Ontario, (8) Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, The University of Western Ontario
We present the first substellar object in a star-forming region spectroscopically confirmed with Euclid, namely J054158.70-021031.4. This young and faint source is located close to the embedded open cluster NGC 2023. It has a spectral type of L3, a reddening of Av = 3 mag, proper motion consistent with the nearby cluster NGC 2024, and a magnitude of ∼24.5 in the Euclid optical band. At the distance of 403 pc, its inferred mass lies close to the planetary-mass boundary. We discovered the object by searching for ultracool dwarf candidates in the Euclid Early Release Observations. The search was based on photometric criteria, followed by the analysis of slitless 2D spectro-images in order to distinguish features that indicate the nature of these objects. This work demonstrates the potential of Euclid to unveil previously hidden populations of very low-mass objects, located in obscured regions where star formation is ongoing.