The CFHT Infrared Astrometry Program: High-Precision Parallaxes for Ultracool Dwarfs

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

We present results from our infrared parallax program at the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) using the wide-field imager WIRCam. The large field-of-view of one WIRCam chip (10' × 10') affords a much larger number of reference stars than previous programs, with most targets having >100 reference stars. Queue service observing at CFHT also enables excellent coverage of the parallax curves for targets over a wide range of right ascensions, and excellent seeing at Mauna Kea has yielded a median FWHM of 0.6" for our observations. The resulting parallax precision we achieve has a median of 1.3 mas and ranges from 0.7-2.7 mas depending on the number of epochs obtained (median of 10 epochs obtained over 2.3 years). These parallaxes are essential for expanding the number of dynamical masses of ultracool dwarfs, particularly at the L/T transition. In addition to these benchmark ultracool binaries, we have been obtaining precise distances for young field brown dwarfs (≈10 Myr) and the latest type T dwarfs (T8+) discovered in recent years by the UKIDSS and CFBDS wide-field surveys.

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