The following document lists the file abstract/ISTEELE_IST_PLE2.abs
from catalogue VI/111.
A plain copy of the file
(without headers/trailers) may be downloaded.
This is PART II of a two part proposal investigating the very low mass population of the Pleiades open cluster. Part I has been submitted separately. Hambly, Hawkins & Jameson (1991, MNRAS, 253, 1) carried out a deep proper motion survey of the Pleiades discovering a large population of low mass stars. Follow-up infrared photometry (Steele, Jameson & Hambly, 1993, MNRAS, 263, 647) showed that around 20 of the Pleiades objects were brown dwarf candidates (ie. had M=0.07-0.08 M_solar). We propose to use ISOCAM to map a 1 square degree area of the cluster. This will allow us to search for objects down to around 0.02 M-solar. Any objects therefore found would be excellent brown dwarf candidates that would stimulate a large follow up program both with ISO and ground based facilities. Extrapolating the mass function of Hambly, Hawkins & Jameson into the brown dwarf regime predicts that this survey should find around 60 brown dwarfs. The chances of success for this proposal in finding brown dwarfs is therefore high. If no brown dwarfs were found this would also be a very important result since this would place strong constraints on theories of star formation by fragmentation.