Bibcode
Scholz, R.-D.; Kharchenko, N. V.; Lodieu, N.; McCaughrean, M. J.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 487, Issue 2, 2008, pp.595-599
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8
2008
Journal
Citations
8
Refereed citations
7
Description
Aims: We describe the discovery of an extremely wide pair of low-mass
stars with a common large proper motion and discuss their possible
membership in a Galactic halo stream crossing the Solar neighbourhood.
Methods: In a high proper motion survey of the southern sky we
used multi-epoch positions and photometry from the SuperCOSMOS Sky
Surveys. New nearby ultracool dwarf and subdwarf candidates were
selected among the faint and red high proper motion objects, and
subsequently confirmed by low-resolution classification spectroscopy.
The resulting spectroscopic distance estimates, approximate radial
velocity measurements and improved proper motions involving additional
epochs from the Two Micron All Sky Survey and from the DEep
Near-Infrared Survey were used to compute Galactic space velocities. Results: The late-type (M 7) dwarf SSSPM J2003-4433 and the ultracool
subdwarf SSSPM J1930-4311 (sdM 7) sharing the same very large proper
motion of about 860 mas/yr were found in the same sky region with an
angular separation of about 6°. From the comparison with other high
proper motion catalogues we have estimated the probability of a chance
alignment of the two new large proper motions to be less than 0.3%. From
the individually estimated spectroscopic distances of about
38+10-7 pc and 72+21-16 pc,
respectively for the M 7 dwarf and the sdM 7 subdwarf, and in view of
the accurate agreement in their large proper motions we assume a common
distance of about 50 pc and a projected physical separation of about 5
pc. The mean heliocentric space velocity of the pair (U,V,W)=(-232,
-170, +74) km s-1, based on the correctness of the
preliminary radial velocity measurement for only one of the components
and on the assumption of a common distance and velocity vector, is
typical of the Galactic halo population. Conclusions: The large
separation and the different metallicities of dwarfs and subdwarfs make
a common formation scenario as a wide binary (later disrupted)
improbable, although there remains some uncertainty in the spectroscopic
classification scheme of ultracool dwarfs/subdwarfs so that a dissolved
binary origin cannot be fully ruled out yet. It seems more likely that
this wide pair is part of an old halo stream. Higher-resolution
spectroscopic observations are needed to measure accurate radial
velocities of both components. Further, we suggest to check the M 7
dwarf for an unresolved binary status, which would explain its shorter
spectroscopic distance estimate, and to place both objects on a
trigonometric parallax program.
Based on
observations with the ESO 3.6 m/EFOSC2 at the European Southern
Observatory, La Silla (ESO program 70.C-0568).