Atmosphere models for very low mass stars, brown dwarfs and exoplanets

Abstract

Over the past decade considerable effort, both observational and theoretical, has been directed towards a more accurate determination of the stellar lower main sequence and of the sub-stellar domain covered by Brown Dwarfs and Planets. Astronomers have been looking for brown dwarfs for more than a decade, either with standard astronomical technics or with microlensing experiments. A breakthrough in the search for brown dwarfs was very recently achieved with the discovery of the first cool brown dwarf GL 229B (Nakajima et al. 1995). At the same epoch, the search for planets blossomed with the discovery of a Jupiter - mass companion of the star 51 Pegasi (Mayor and Queloz 199,5). Now, the number of faint, cool stars and substellar objects is rising rapidly.