Description
Determination of the mass functions of open clusters of different ages allows us to infer the efficiency with which brown dwarfs are evaporated from clusters to populate the field. In this paper we present the results of a photometric survey to identify low mass and brown dwarf members of the old open cluster Praesepe (age 590^+150^_-120_Myr, distance 190^+6.0^_-5.8_pc) from which we estimate its mass function and compare this with that of other clusters. We performed an optical (Ic-band) and near-infrared (J and Ks-band) photometric survey of Praesepe covering 3.1{deg}^2^. With 5sigma detection limits of Ic=23.4 and J=20.0, our survey is predicted to be sensitive to objects with masses from 0.6 to 0.05M_{sun}.
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