University of Birmingham > Talks@bham > Astrophysics Talks Series > [Friday seminar]: Irradiated brown dwarfs in the desert

[Friday seminar]: Irradiated brown dwarfs in the desert

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If you have a question about this talk, please contact Lalitha Sairam.

The brown dwarf desert refers to a known dearth of brown dwarf companions to main sequence stars orbiting within 3 AU. The phenomenon is thought to be caused by the different formation mechanisms at play to create stars and planets. However, despite their rarity, brown dwarfs within the brown dwarf desert are the only systems in which we can compare an irradiated exoplanet atmosphere to that of an irradiated brown dwarf, allowing an understanding of how gravity affects atmospheres and clouds. My research focuses on the evolved form of brown dwarfs within the brown dwarf desert – white dwarf-brown dwarf binaries. These systems have incredibly short orbital periods (~hrs), and the white dwarfs are often hotter than most main sequence stars, as high as 25,000 K. I will discuss results from our HST programme to observe 7 of these binaries and our results to date.

This talk is part of the Astrophysics Talks Series series.

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