OTS 44 explained

OTS 44 is a free-floating planetary-mass object or brown dwarf located at 530ly in the constellation Chamaeleon near the reflection nebula IC 2631. It is among the lowest-mass free-floating substellar objects, with approximately 11.5 times the mass of Jupiter, or approximately 1.1% that of the Sun.^[1] Its radius is estimated to be 3.2 or 3.6 times that of Jupiter.

OTS 44 was discovered in 1998 by Oasa, Tamura, and Sugitani as a member of the star-forming region Chamaeleon I.^{[2] [3]} Based upon infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, OTS 44 emits an excess of infrared radiation for an object of its type, suggesting it has a circumstellar disk of dust and particles of rock and ice.^[4] This disk (gas+dust) has a SED-fitted mass of at about 30 Earth masses. Observations with the SINFONI spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope show that the diskis accreting matter at the rate of approximately 10⁻¹¹ of the mass of the Sun per year. It could eventually develop into a planetary system. Observations with ALMA detected the disk in millimeter wavelengths. The observations constrained the dust mass of the disk between 0.07 and 0.63, but these mass estimates are limited by assumptions on poorly constrained parameters.^[5] Another work estimates the dust mass to 0.064 (5.2) for dust particles of 1 mm in size and 0.295 (24) for dust particles of 1 μm in size.^[6]

See also

• SCR 1845-6357, a binary system comprising a red dwarf and a brown dwarf
• Cha 110913-773444, an astronomical object that may be a free-floating planet surrounded by what appears to be a protoplanetary disk
• J1407b, an object possibly similar to OTS 44 that transited the star V1400 Centauri
• 2MASS J11151597+1937266, a relative nearby free-floating planetary-mass object with a disk

External links

• Astronomers Discover Beginnings of 'Mini' Solar System (Spitzer Space Telescope)
• MPIA Science Release 2013-09 - Blurring the lines between stars and planets: Lonely planets offer clues to star formation

Notes and References

1. Luhmann. K. L.. Peterson. D. E.. Megeath. S. T.. Spectroscopic Confirmation of the Least Massive Known Brown Dwarf in Chamaeleon. The Astrophysical Journal. 617. 1. 565–568. 2004. 10.1086/425228. astro-ph/0411445 . 2004ApJ...617..565L . 18157277 .
2. Tamura. M.. Itoh. Y.. Oasa. Y.. Nakajima. T.. Isolated and Companion Young Brown Dwarfs in the Taurus and Chamaeleon Molecular Clouds. Science. 282. 5391. 1998. 1095–7. 10.1126/science.282.5391.1095. 9804541. 1998Sci...282.1095T .
3. Oasa. Y.. Tamura. M.. Sugitani. K.. A Deep Near-Infrared Survey of the Chamaeleon I Dark Cloud Core. The Astrophysical Journal. 526. 1. 336–343. 1999. 10.1086/307964. 1999ApJ...526..336O . free.
4. Web site: Blurring the lines between stars and planets: Lonely planets offer clues to star formation. MPIA Science Release 2013-09. 1 September 2014.
5. Bayo. Amelia. Joergens. Viki. Liu. Yao. Brauer. Robert. Olofsson. Johan. Arancibia. Javier. Pinilla. Paola. Paola Pinilla . Wolf. Sebastian. Ruge. Jan Philipp. Henning. Thomas. Natta. Antonella. May 2017. First Millimeter Detection of the Disk around a Young, Isolated, Planetary-mass Object. Astrophysical Journal Letters. en. 841. 1. L11. 10.3847/2041-8213/aa7046. 2017ApJ...841L..11B. 0004-637X. 10150/624481. 73605838 . free . free . 1705.06378 .
6. Wu . Ya-Lin . Bowler . Brendan P. . Sheehan . Patrick D. . Close . Laird M. . Eisner . Joshua A. . Best . William M. J. . Ward-Duong . Kimberly . Zhu . Zhaohuan . Kraus . Adam L. . 2022-05-01 . ALMA Discovery of a Disk around the Planetary-mass Companion SR 12 c . The Astrophysical Journal . 930 . 1 . L3 . 2204.06013 . 2022ApJ...930L...3W . 10.3847/2041-8213/ac6420 . free . 0004-637X.