Orbital motion of the binary brown dwarf companions HD 130948 BC around their host star

Evolutionary models and mass estimates for brown dwarfs remain uncertain, hence determining the masses of brown dwarfs by model-independent methods is important to test and constrain such theories. Following the orbital motion of brown dwarf companions around their primaries gives us the opportunity to dynamically calculate the masses of these systems. In addition, detecting curvature (acceleration or deceleration) in the orbit would confirm that the companion is physically associated with its primary, thus eliminating the possibility of a by-chance alignment of the primary's and the companion's proper motions and positions. Furthermore, the orbit parameters can be important indicators for the formation process of such wide, massive substellar companions. The binary brown dwarf companions to HD 130948 were discovered by Potter et al. We present various observations of this triple system over the course of 7 yr. With these data points we can show that HD 130948 BC are indeed comoving with HD 130948 A with higher significance than before (∼32.4σ), and also for the first time that the BC pair shows differential motion relative to A (∼2.2σ). We introduce an orbit fitting approach and constrain the orbit parameters for the orbit of the BC binary around their host star....