Program: GN-2015A-Q-57

Young brown dwarfs have been shown to be analogous to exoplanets as they have surface gravities that are similar to those of the directly imaged giant exoplanets. With the goal of understanding the underlying cause of dust in the upper atmospheres of L and T dwarfs - low surface gravity or high overall dust content - we are continuing a large program to identify peculiar brown dwarfs in the SDSS, 2MASS and WISE catalogs based on their optical and infrared colours. From this program we have already uncovered 10 new peculiar brown dwarfs, one of which has one of the most extreme near-IR colours ever found. This is the first systematic search for peculiar brown dwarfs from which we expect to elucidate the full range of atmospheric properties of L and T dwarfs. This is part of a joint follow-up program with SpeX on the IRTF. For the faintest of our candidate peculiar L and T dwarfs, we require higher sensitivity from a large aperture telescope such as Gemini. We propose to observe our faintest candidates with GNIRS and Flamingos 2. Our brighter objects will be observed with IRTF.