Sanchez Bejar, Victor J.

Contact Email: vbejar@ll.iac.es
Institute: Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
First Coauthor: R. Rebolo
Institute: Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
Second Coauthor: M. R. Zapatero Osorio
Institute: CALTECH
Presenting Thesis: Yes
Subject Area: Brown Dwarfs & Extrasolar Planets
Waveband: Optical
Technique: Photometry
Presentation: Poster Display
Title: The substellar domain in the $\epsilon$ Orionis cluster
Abstract: We present a CCD-based IZ photometric survey covering a total area of $\sim$1000 arcmin² around the young massive star $\epsilon$ Orionis ($\sim$7 Myr). Our observations are deep enough to detect cluster members from 0.3 $M_{\odot}$ (I=15) down to 0.015 $M_{\odot}$ (I=22), i.e. approaching the deuterium burning mass limit. Follow-up J-band photometry of the majority of our 123 candidates, and optical spectroscopy obtained very recently for 4 of them indicate that we have identified a rather abundant population of young low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. We compare our findings in $\epsilon$ Orionis with previous surveys in other young clusters.