First L Dwarf in the Kepler Field

An image of WISE 1906+4011 from the Kepler Observatory; the green mask marks the location of this faint source.

The Kepler Observatory is uncovering numerous planets in close orbits around distant stars.  Now it has a brown dwarf under its belt.  A search for nearby cool dwarfs by University of Delaware collaborator John Gizis uncovered the first L dwarf in Kepler, a source that may teach us much about clouds in cool brown dwarfs.

FIRE Fingerprints Cold Brown Dwarfs

In this WISE false-color image, a cold brown dwarf appears green

The Folded Port Infrared Echellette (FIRE) spectrograph, commissioned in March 2010, is contributing to the discovery of some of the coldest and least luminous brown dwarfs found to date.  In a paper accepted for publication to the Astrophysical Journal, we report the discovery of five late-type T dwarfs from the WISE survey identified by FIRE.