Broadband photometry of the cool companion Gliese 229B

What changed

Following the 1995 discovery of the cool companion Gliese 229B, Matthews and colleagues measured and reassessed its broadband emission from 0.8 to 10.5 micrometres, revising earlier near-infrared photometry affected by scattered light from the primary star. The observed bands imply a luminosity of (4.9 ± 0.6) × 10⁻⁶ solar luminosities.

Scientific scope

Following the 1995 discovery of the cool companion Gliese 229B, Matthews and colleagues measured and reassessed its broadband emission from 0.8 to 10.5 micrometres, revising earlier near-infrared photometry affected by scattered light from the primary star. The observed bands imply a luminosity of (4.9 ± 0.6) × 10⁻⁶ solar luminosities. The 1996 paper treated the companion as one object; its roughly 900 K effective temperature used an assumed radius and its 6.4 × 10⁻⁶ solar bolometric luminosity additionally used atmosphere-model extrapolation. These are historical combined-light inferences, not direct temperatures or luminosities of separately resolved components.

Evidence

The linked original works support the scoped statement and contribution attribution. WRS has not independently replayed experiments or reconstructed a full mathematical proof. The 1996 paper treated the companion as one object; its roughly 900 K effective temperature used an assumed radius and its 6.4 × 10⁻⁶ solar bolometric luminosity additionally used atmosphere-model extrapolation. These are historical combined-light inferences, not direct temperatures or luminosities of separately resolved components.

Contributors

• The named authors in the research record · SCIENCE: These are the listed authors of the cited contribution sources. Paper authorship does not quantify individual effort. An incomplete list is explicitly marked; same names are not automatically merged.

• Spectral Energy Distribution and Bolometric Luminosity of the Cool Brown Dwarf Gliese 229B

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