S. T. Hodgkin

The paper ‘The first planet detected in the WTS: an inflated hot-Jupiter in a 3.35 d orbit around a late F star’ was published in MNRAS, 427, 1877 (2012).

We present optical and infrared observations of RPr1, a faint (I = 21.01) and very red object (I - K = 4.57) discovered in a deep CCD survey, covering an area of 800 square arcmin of the Praesepe open cluster. A low resolution spectrum shows that RPr1 is a very late object, the latest object in Praesepe for which a spectrum has been taken to date. Our estimates give a mass between 0.063 and 0.084 solar masses, and indicate that RPr1 may turn out to be the first brown dwarf in this cluster.Comment: 7 pages, 3 Postscript figures, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

We present optical and infrared observations of RPr1, a faint (I = 21.01) and very red object (I - K = 4.57) discovered in a deep CCD survey, covering an area of 800 square arcmin of the Praesepe open cluster. A low resolution spectrum shows that RPr1 is a very late object, the latest object in Praesepe for which a spectrum has been taken to date. Our estimates give a mass between 0.063 and 0.084 solar masses, and indicate that RPr1 may turn out to be the first brown dwarf in this cluster.

We present intermediate and low resolution optical spectroscopy (650-915 nm) of seven faint, very red objects (20 > I >= 17.8, I-Z >= 0.5) discovered in a CCD-based IZ survey covering an area of 1 sq. deg in the central region of the Pleiades open cluster. The observed spectra show that these objects are very cool dwarfs, having spectral types in the range M6-M9. Five out of the seven objects can be considered as Pleiades members on the basis of their radial velocities, Halpha emission and other gravity sensitive atomic features like the NaI doublet at 818.3 and 819.5 nm. According to current evolutionary models the masses of these new objects range from roughly 80 MJup for the hottest in the sample down to 45 MJup for Roque 4, the coolest and faintest confirmed member. These observations prove that the cloud fragmentation process extends well into the brown dwarf realm, suggesting a rise in the initial mass function below the substellar limit.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, aasms4 macro in LateX. 1997 ApJ Letters, accepte

We present intermediate and low resolution optical spectroscopy (650-915 nm) of seven faint, very red objects (20 > I >= 17.8, I-Z >= 0.5) discovered in a CCD-based IZ survey covering an area of 1 sq. deg in the central region of the Pleiades open cluster. The observed spectra show that these objects are very cool dwarfs, having spectral types in the range M6-M9. Five out of the seven objects can be considered as Pleiades members on the basis of their radial velocities, Halpha emission and other gravity sensitive atomic features like the NaI doublet at 818.3 and 819.5 nm. According to current evolutionary models the masses of these new objects range from roughly 80 MJup for the hottest in the sample down to 45 MJup for Roque 4, the coolest and faintest confirmed member. These observations prove that the cloud fragmentation process extends well into the brown dwarf realm, suggesting a rise in the initial mass function below the substellar limit.

We report the serendipitous discovery of a new, very low luminosity, cool degenerate in the region of Taurus. The object was found as a very high proper-motion star (μ = 13 yr^-1) on seven I-band UK Schmidt Telescope plates, dating from 1987 to 1994, via digitized scans from the new, fast, high-precision microdensitometer SuperCOSMOS. Photometry and spectrophotometry indicate that the object has a temperature comparable to those of the handful of coolest white dwarfs currently known (T~3900 K). We discuss the relevance of this discovery to current research concerning Galactic structure and evolution.