Program: GS-2006B-Q-19

A large high-proper motion object search is underway at the CTIO 1.5m telescope, using a wide-field infrared camera and relying on 2MASS as a first epoch and DSS2-I band observations to constrain I-J magnitudes of high-proper motion objects. We have identified 13 candidate L and 3 candidate early-T dwarfs and propose to obtain low-resolution spectra covering the full near-infrared domain for these objects to firmly establish their spectroscopic subtypes. Of prime interest within this sample are four Ls and one very late M that are within a small area of the sky, have similar proper motion and that have photometric properties consistent with a common distance. Should these objects be part of a yet unidentified moving group, they are expected to have a low surface gravity due to their youth, an hypothesis that will be tested with these spectroscopic observations. Another tantalizing discovery is an object most likely to be the second brightest T dwarf in the sky and the brightest one accessible from the northern hemisphere. If this object is indeed an early-T, it would be highly amenable to high S/N spectroscopic study.