[109.10] HST/NICMOS Grism Observations of Brown Dwarfs in NGC 1333

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 109 Surveys for Young Stars Down to the Brown Dwarf Limit
Poster, Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall

Previous | Session 109 | Next

[109.10] HST/NICMOS Grism Observations of Brown Dwarfs in NGC 1333

J. Greissl, M.R. Meyer (Steward Obs.), B.A. Wilking (UM-St.Louis), G. Schneider, E.T. Young (Steward Obs.), T.P. Greene (NASA Ames), T. Fanetti, A. Benoist (UM-St.Louis)

We present preliminary results of a deep spectroscopic survey of the young embedded cluster NGC 1333, centered on brown dwarf candidates previously identified in Wilking et al. (2004). Our goal is to probe the cluster IMF down to the minimum mass for opacity-limited fragmentation in typical molecular clouds (thought to be ~ 5-10 M_Jup) which should depend strongly on the initial conditions of formation. We present grism spectra of selected objects from the region as well as those of several previously identified brown dwarfs. These data are compared with models from Allard et al. (2000; 2003) for a range of temperatures and surface gravities. In addition we explore the use of a reddening independent narrowband index as a spectral indicator. This index is sensitive to the depth of the water vapor absorption feature in low-mass stars and brown dwarfs and can provide a powerful tool for deriving spectral types for young low mass objects.

Previous | Session 109 | Next