WISE 2150-7520AB: A Very Low-mass, Wide Comoving Brown Dwarf System Discovered through the Citizen Science Project Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 This paper includes data gathered with the 6.5 m Magellan Telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 889; no. 2
• Main Authors: Faherty, Jacqueline K., Goodman, Sam, Caselden, Dan, Colin, Guillaume, Kuchner, Marc J., Meisner, Aaron M., Gagné, Jonathan, Schneider, Adam C., Gonzales, Eileen C., Bardalez Gagliuffi, Daniella C., Logsdon, Sarah E., Allers, Katelyn, Burgasser, Adam J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The American Astronomical Society 04-02-2020
• Subjects: Astrometry; Brown dwarfs; L dwarfs; Late-type dwarf stars; Star formation; Stellar kinematics; Substellar companion stars; T dwarfs
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab5303

We report the discovery of WISE 2150-7520AB (W2150AB): a widely separated (∼341 au) very low-mass L1 + T8 co-moving system. The system consists of the previously known L1 primary 2MASS J21501592-7520367 and a newly discovered T8 secondary found at position 21:50:18.99-75:20:54.6 (MJD = 57947) using Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer data via the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project. We present Spitzer ch1 and ch2 photometry (ch1-ch2 = 1.41 0.04 mag) of the secondary and Folded-port InfraRed Echellette prism spectra of both components. The sources show no peculiar spectral or photometric signatures, indicating that each component is likely field age. Using all observed data and the Gaia DR2 parallax of 41.3593 0.2799 mas for W2150A we deduce fundamental parameters of log(Lbol/L☉) = −3.69 0.01, Teff = 2118 62 K, and an estimated mass = 72 12 MJup for the L1 and log(Lbol/L☉) = −5.64 0.02, Teff = 719 61 K, and an estimated mass = 34 22 MJup for the T8. At a physical separation of ∼341 au this system has Ebin = 1041 erg, making it the lowest binding energy system of any pair with Mtot < 0.1 MSun not associated with a young cluster. It is equivalent in estimated mass ratio, Ebin, and physical separation to the ∼2 Myr M7.25 + M8.25 binary brown dwarf 2MASS J11011926-7732383AB (2M1101AB) found in the Chameleon star-forming region. W2150AB is the widest companion system yet observed in the field where the primary is an L dwarf or later.