To address the questions of how many brown dwarfs there are in the Milky Way, how do these objects relate to star formation, and whether the brown dwarf formation rate was different in the past, the star-to-brown dwarf number ratio can be considered. While main sequence stars are well known components of the solar neighborhood, lower mass, substellar objects increasingly add to the census of the nearest objects. The sky projection of the known objects at <6.5 pc shows that stars present a uniform distribution and brown dwarfs a non-uniform distribution, with about four times more brown dwarfs behind than ahead of the Sun relative to the direction of rotation of the Galaxy. Assuming that substellar objects distribute uniformly, their observed configuration has a probability of 0.1 %. The helio- and geocentricity of the configuration suggests that it probably results from an observational bias, which if compensated for by future discoveries, would bring the star-to-brown dwarf ratio in agreement with the average ratio found in star forming regions.

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Poster #198