Cool Stars 14 - Submitted Abstract # 14
This version created on 05 October 2006

Planetary mass cloud cores in Ophiuchus


Jane Greaves, University of St Andrews

(For splinter session on proto-brown dwarfs) Cores of planetary mass
have been identified in the cloud Ophiuchus D, using thermal dust
images made with the SCUBA submillimetre camera.  The counts suggest
such low-mass cores are a simple extension of the clump mass function
in the stellar-mass regime.  Millimetre spectral lines were detected
for a few cores, and one object was found to be gravitationally bound
at only 8 Jupiter masses.  The data support the idea that planetary
mass objects can form like stars, from their own natal cloud cores.

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