Program: GN-2015B-Q-43

The measurement of the minimum mass of the IMF would provide a fundamental test of theories of star and planet formation. To provide better constraints on the minimum of the IMF, we are using colors and proper motions measured from deep images from the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes to search for low-mass brown dwarfs in the NGC 1333 cluster (260 pc). In these data, we have identified 14 promising candidates that should have masses as low as 5 Jupiter masses if they are members, which would make them some of the least massive known brown dwarfs. We propose to use GNIRS to obtain near-infrared spectra of these candidates to determine whether they are young brown dwarfs.