WISE J064336.71-022315.4: A Thick Disk L8 Gaia DR2-Discovered Brown Dwarf at 13.9 Parsecs

Abstract

While spectroscopically characterizing nearby ultracool dwarfs discovered in the Gaia Second Data Release with the TripleSpec spectrograph on the Palomar 200'' telescope, we encountered a particularly cool, nearby, new member of the solar neighborhood: Gaia DR2 3106548406384807680 = WISE J064336.71-022315.4 = 2MASS J06433670-0223130. The $Gaia$ parallax corresponds to a distance of 13.9 $\pm$ 0.3 pc. Using our TripleSpec spectrum we classify W0643 as spectral type L8, and measured a heliocentric radial velocity of 142 $\pm$ 12 km s${}^{-1}$. When combined with $Gaia$ astrometry, we determine a Galactic velocity (heliocentric; $U$ towards Galactic center) of $U,V,W$ = -109, -91, -12 ($\pm$10, 5, 3) km s${}^{-1}$. We estimate that W0643 passed within $\sim$1.4 pc away from the Sun $\sim$100,000 years ago.

RNAAS - Accepted