Spitzer + Hubble Space Telescope Parallaxes of 13 Late T and Y Dwarfs

May 2026 • 2026AJ....171..284M

Authors • Marocco, Federico • Kirkpatrick, J. Davy • Smart, Richard L. • Schneider, Adam C. • Caselden, Dan • Costa, Edgardo • Cushing, Michael C. • Dirk, Maximiliano • Eisenhardt, Peter R. M. • Faherty, Jacqueline K. • Gelino, Christopher R. • Kuchner, Marc J. • Meisner, Aaron M. • Mendez, Rene A. • Stiller, Robert A. • Wright, Edward L.

Abstract • We present astrometric measurements for 13 cold brown dwarfs in the solar neighborhood (d < 20 pc). By combining archival Spitzer data with our own Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations, we achieve parallax uncertainties typically around 10%. Using Spitzer and HST photometry we compare our targets with other known late T and Y dwarfs in the Solar neighborhood, confirming that there is large intrinsic scatter in the near- and mid-infrared absolute magnitudes and colors of this population, further highlighting the diversity observed spectroscopically by several James Webb Space Telescope programs. This scatter makes photometric distance estimates highly unreliable and, therefore, makes astrometric parallax measurements fundamental for a meaningful characterization of even the nearest cold brown dwarfs.

Links

• PDF https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ae5061/pdf
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.08984
• DATA https://doi.org/10.17909/bb60-k406
• DATA https://doi.org/10.26131/IRSA543
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae5061