Astronomers have reported the first extensive survey of low mass and substellar objects in a young association of class O and B stars. The study was performed with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), and focused on objects in the 5–20 Myr Upper Centaurus Lupus (UCL) and Lower Centaurus Crux (LCC) subgroups of the Scorpius–Centaurus OB Association (Sco–Cen). This is the closest OB association to the Sun.

The DECam is part of the Dark Energy Survey, which is an international effort to map the southern sky to better understand dark energy. Researchers reduced over 11 million point sources in the data down to 118 ‘best’ and 348 ‘good’ candidates for further study.

The paper, “DECam Survey for Low-Mass Stars and Substellar Objects in the UCL and LCC Subgroups of the Sco-Cen OB Association (SCOCENSUS),” was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The work was supported by the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS).  NExSS is a NASA  research coordination network supported in part by the  NASA Astrobiology Program. This program element is shared between NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) and the Astrophysics Division.