Possible astrometric discovery of a substellar companion to the closest binary brown dwarf system WISE J104915.57-531906.1

Abstract

Using FORS2 on the Very Large Telescope, we have astrometrically monitored over a period of two months the two components of the brown dwarf system WISE J104915.57-531906.1, the closest one to the Sun. Our astrometric measurements-with a relative precision at the milli-arcsecond scale-allowed us to detect the orbital motion and derive more precisely the parallax of the system, leading to a distance of 2.020 ± 0.019 pc. The relative orbital motion of the two objects is found to be perturbed, which leads us to suspect the presence of a substellar companion around one of the two components. We also performed VRIz photometry of the two components and compared this with models. We confirm the flux reversal of the T dwarf. © 2013 ESO.