An Oasis in the Brown Dwarf Desert

A new paper published this month in The Astronomical Journal by astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) reports a wellspring of new brown dwarf stellar companions, throwing cold water on the entire idea of the “brown dwarf desert,” the previously mystifying lack of these sub-stellar objects around stars.



http://www.sdss.org/releases/an-oasis-in-the-brown-dwarf-desert-astronomers-surprised-relieved/

They suggest 60 stars have evidence for planetary mass companions.

I'm looking at the data right now. In the 382 companions detected.

-69 companions are <13Mj (Deuterium burning limit)
-101 are <25Mj (EPE limit)
-169 are <65Mj (Lithium burning limit)
-180 are <80Mj (Hydrogène burning limit)

I guess many of them was already detected by other programs. I'm trying to find the names of the stars in other catalogs...

http://www.aip.de/en/news/press/the-missing-brown-dwarfs

The Missing Brown Dwarfs

« …The scientists concluded that there should be many more brown dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood that are yet to be discovered and that will fill the observed gap. If they are right, this would mean that star formation fails significantly more often than previously thought, producing one brown dwarf for every four stars. In any case, it appears, the established picture of the solar neighbourhood and of its brown dwarf population will have to be retouchât… »