The proposed Eclipse Discovery mission is an optical space telescope designed to provide a thousandfold reduction in scattered light near bright stars in comparison to any Hubble Space Telescope instrument. A survey of 500 single stars within 15 pc can detect companions with absolute z magnitude of 22 at separations > 10 AU in most of the targets. Spectrophotometry of CH4 and H2O bands between 0.8-1.0 μm can be used to derive the effective temperatures of the objects. The ECLIPSE brown dwarf survey would directly measure the luminosity function of brown dwarf companions down to ~20 Jupiter masses, providing a crucial comparison with field objects.
The Solar Neighborhood. XLVII. Comparing M-dwarf Models with Hubble Space Telescope Dynamical Masses and Spectroscopy*
