Spectra of brown dwarf candidates in ONC from JWST

DOI

We have used the multiobject mode of the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to obtain low-resolution 1-5um spectra of 22 brown dwarf candidates in the Orion Nebula Cluster, which were selected with archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the targets was previously classified as a Herbig-Haro (HH) object and exhibits strong emission in HI, H_2_, and the fundamental band of CO, further demonstrating that HH objects can have bright emission in that CO band. The remaining targets have late spectral types (M6.5 to early L) and are young based on gravity-sensitive features, as expected for low-mass members of the cluster. According to theoretical evolutionary models, these objects should have masses that range from the hydrogen burning limit to 0.003-0.007M_{sun}. Two of the NIRSpec targets were identified as proplyds in earlier analysis of Hubble images. They have spectral types of M6.5 and M7.5, making them two of the coolest and least massive known proplyds. Another brown dwarf shows absorption bands at 3-5um from ices containing H_2_O, CO_2, OCN^-^, and CO, indicating that it is either an edge-on class II system or a class I protostar. It is the coolest and least massive object that has detections of these ice features. In addition, it appears to be the first candidate for a protostellar brown dwarf that has spectroscopy confirming its late spectral type.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/975/162/table1 (Sources in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) observed with JWST/NIRSpec)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.19750162
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/975/162
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/975/162
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/975/162
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/975/162
Provenance
Creator Luhman K.L.; Alves de Oliveira C.; Baraffe I.; Chabrier G.; Manjavacas E.,Parker R.J.; Tremblin P.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2025
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Interstellar medium; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics; Stellar Astronomy