# # Program information file # PROGRAM_ID 2022A059 PROGRAM_TITLE Discovering the youngest free-floating planets: spectroscopic confirmation of candidate young brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects in Taurus and Barnard 5 PROGRAM_INV1 Beth Biller PROGRAM_INV2 Bhavana Lalchand PROGRAM_INV3 Michael Liu PROGRAM_INV4 Loic Albert PROGRAM_INV5 Sophie Dubber PROGRAM_SCICAT extra-solar planets PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_BEG Low mass brown dwarfs and free-floating planets in star-forming regions are vital tracers of the low mass end of the star-formation and key analogues to exoplanets around stars. An efficient method of searching for these young objects is to identify them via spectral features, such as the 1.45 um H2O absorption band seen in spectra of M-L-T-Y type objects. Here we propose for low-resolution IRTF SpeX spectroscopic follow-up to confirm the substellar nature and determine the surface gravity of water-absorption selected brown dwarf and planetary mass candidate members of the Taurus and Barnard 5 star-forming regions. These candidates also have z-J and WISE 1 - WISE 2 colors indicative of >M6 spectral types. Completing spectroscopic follow-up for these Taurus candidates will provide the strongest constraints to date on the planetary-mass IMF in Taurus. We also include two late-M dwarf candidate members of the largely unexplored Barnard 5 globule in the Perseus cloud complex; if confirmed, this will be the first discovery of brown dwarf members of Barnard 5. PROGRAM_ABSTRACT_END