In 2010, myself and co-founders Emily Rice and Kelle Cruz, combined our similar scientific interests related to the study of low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets and founded the working research group entitled Brown Dwarf New York City (BDNYC). We are currently engaged in comparative brown dwarf/exoplanet studies and are primarily interested in exploiting the properties of well-characterized brown dwarfs for the purpose of disentangling age, metallicity, gravity, and atmospheric effects on their observables. We invite researchers in the New York Metropolitan area and beyond to join in collaborative meetings and journal clubs. Our group is centered at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The first results emerging from the BDNYC are:
- A Detailed Characterization of the 10-20 Myr Brown Dwarf 2M0608, which is the lowest mass member of the nearby Beta Pictoris moving group The Lowest-mass Member of the Beta Pictoris Moving Group
- A Detailed Characterization of the 50-100 Myr Brown Dwarf 2M0355, which shows striking similarities to giant exoplanets 2MASSJ035523.51+113337.4: A Young, Dusty, Nearby, Isolated Brown Dwarf Resembling A Giant Exoplanet
- An informative splinter session at the Cool Stars 16 meeting in Seattle, Washington regarding studies related to juvenile ultracool dwarfs Juvenile Ultracool Dwarfs
Students engaged in research projects directly related to the BDNYC maintain a blog at BDNYC.org where they document daily progress.