TY - JOUR
T1 - Retrieving Young Cloudy L-Dwarfs
T2 - A Nearby Planetary-Mass Companion BD+60 1417B and Its Isolated Red Twin W0047
AU - Phillips, Caprice L.
AU - Faherty, Jacqueline K.
AU - Burningham, Ben
AU - Vos, Johanna M.
AU - Gonzales, Eileen
AU - Griffith, Emily J.
AU - Merchan, Sherelyn Alejandro
AU - Calamari, Emily
AU - Visscher, Channon
AU - Morley, Caroline V.
AU - Whiteford, Niall
AU - Gaarn, Josefine
AU - Ilyin, Ilya
AU - Strassmeier, Klaus
N1 - © 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
PY - 2024/9/5
Y1 - 2024/9/5
N2 - We present an atmospheric retrieval analysis on a set of young, cloudy, red L dwarfs—CWISER J124332.12+600126.2 (BD+60 1417B) and WISEP J004701.06+680352.1 (W0047)—using the Brewster retrieval framework. We also present the first elemental abundance measurements of the young K-dwarf (K0) host star, BD+60 1417, using high-resolution (R = 50,000) spectra taken with the Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument on the Large Binocular Telescope. In the complex cloudy L-dwarf regime the emergence of condensate cloud species complicates retrieval analysis when only near-infrared data are available. We find that for both L dwarfs in this work, despite testing three different thermal profile parameterizations we are unable to constrain reliable abundance measurements and thus the carbon-to-oxygen ratio. While we cannot conclude what the abundances are, we can conclude that the data strongly favor a cloud model over a cloudless model. We note that the difficulty in retrieval constraints persists regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio of the data examined (S/N ∼ 10 for CWISER BD+60 1417B and 40 for WISEP W0047). The results presented in this work provide valuable lessons about retrieving young, low-surface-gravity cloudy L dwarfs. This work provides continued evidence of missing information in models and the crucial need for JWST to guide and inform retrieval analysis in this regime.
AB - We present an atmospheric retrieval analysis on a set of young, cloudy, red L dwarfs—CWISER J124332.12+600126.2 (BD+60 1417B) and WISEP J004701.06+680352.1 (W0047)—using the Brewster retrieval framework. We also present the first elemental abundance measurements of the young K-dwarf (K0) host star, BD+60 1417, using high-resolution (R = 50,000) spectra taken with the Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument on the Large Binocular Telescope. In the complex cloudy L-dwarf regime the emergence of condensate cloud species complicates retrieval analysis when only near-infrared data are available. We find that for both L dwarfs in this work, despite testing three different thermal profile parameterizations we are unable to constrain reliable abundance measurements and thus the carbon-to-oxygen ratio. While we cannot conclude what the abundances are, we can conclude that the data strongly favor a cloud model over a cloudless model. We note that the difficulty in retrieval constraints persists regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio of the data examined (S/N ∼ 10 for CWISER BD+60 1417B and 40 for WISEP W0047). The results presented in this work provide valuable lessons about retrieving young, low-surface-gravity cloudy L dwarfs. This work provides continued evidence of missing information in models and the crucial need for JWST to guide and inform retrieval analysis in this regime.
KW - astro-ph.SR
KW - astro-ph.EP
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85203239032&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ad5d57
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ad5d57
M3 - Article
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 972
JO - The Astrophysical Journal
JF - The Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 172
ER -