WISE 0350−5658

WISE J035000.32−565830.2 is a (sub-)brown dwarf of spectral class Y1, located in constellation Reticulum, the nearest known star/brown dwarf in this constellation. Being approximately 18.5 light-years from Earth, it is one of the Sun's nearest neighbors.

Discovery

WISE 0350−5658 was discovered in 2012 by J. Davy Kirkpatrick and colleagues from data collected by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in the infrared at a wavelength of 40 cm, whose mission lasted from December 2009 to February 2011. In 2012, Kirkpatrick et al. published a paper in The Astrophysical Journal, where they presented the discovery of seven new brown dwarfs of spectral type Y that had been found by WISE, among which was WISE 0350−5658.

WISE 0350−5658 is one of the nearest known brown dwarfs: its trigonometric parallax is 0.184 ± 0.010 arcsecond, corresponding to a direct distance of 5.4 pc.

WISE 0350−5658 was observed together with WISEP J1738+2732 with the Gemini Observatory. The researchers found that non-equilibrium chemistry models reproduce the spectra of these two brown dwarfs better than equilibrium models. The researchers also found an effective temperature of 350±25 K and surface gravity of log g=4.0±0.25 for WISE 0350−5658. A mass of 7−9 was estimated in this work. Later work using the Spitzer Space Telescope and J-band photometry found that WISE 0350−5658 has a low tangential velocity, could be metal-rich and also found a similar mass of 3−8. These properties could be an indicator that it is a young Y-dwarf, and might be a rogue planet. Another work using Hubble found a slightly higher mass of 7−13.