OTS 44 was discovered in 1998 by Oasa, Tamura, and Sugitani as a member of the star-forming region Chamaeleon I.[5][6] Based upon infrared observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, OTS 44 emits an excess of infrared radiation for an object of its type, suggesting it has a circumstellar disk of dust and particles of rock and ice.[1][3][7] This disk has a mass of at least 10 Earth masses.[3]
Observations with the SINFONI spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope show that the disk
is accreting matter at the rate of approximately 10−11 of the mass of the Sun per year.[3] It could eventually develop into a planetary system. Observations with ALMA detected the disk in millimeter wavelengths. The observations constrained the dust mass of the disk between 0.07 and 0.63 ME, but these mass estimates are limited by assumptions on poorly constrained parameters.[8]
See also
SCR 1845-6357, a binary system comprising a red dwarf and a brown dwarf
Cha 110913-773444, an astronomical object that may be a free-floating planet surrounded by what appears to be a protoplanetary disk
^ abcBonnefoy, M.; Chauvin, G.; Lagrange, A.-M.; Rojo, P.; Allard, F.; Pinte, C.; Dumas, C.; Homeier, D. (2014). "A library of near-infrared integral field spectra of young M-L dwarfs". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 562 (127): A127. arXiv:1306.3709. Bibcode:2014A&A...562A.127B. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201118270.