NPARSEC : NTT Parallaxes of Southern Extremely Cool objects. Goals, targets, procedures and first results

Smart, R.L., Tinney, C.G., Bucciarelli, B., Marocco, F., Abbas, U., Andrei, A., Bernardi, G., Burningham, B., Cardoso, C., Costa, E., Crosta, M.T., Dapra, M., Day-Jones, A., Goldman, B., Jones, H.R.A., Lattanzi, M.G., Leggett, S.K., Lucas, P.W., Mendez, R., Penna, J.L., Pinfield, D.J., Smith, Leigh, Sozzetti, A. and Vecchiato, A. (2013) NPARSEC : NTT Parallaxes of Southern Extremely Cool objects. Goals, targets, procedures and first results. pp. 2054-2063. ISSN 0035-8711
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The discovery and subsequent detailed study of T dwarfs have provided many surprises and pushed the physics and modelling of cool atmospheres in unpredicted directions. Distance is a critical parameter for studies of these objects to determine intrinsic luminosities, test binarity and measure their motion in the Galaxy. We describe a new observational programme to determine distances across the full range of T-dwarf subtypes using the New Technology Telescope (NTT)/SOFI telescope/instrument combination. We present preliminary results for ten objects, five of which represent new distances.