Kevin Luhman

Biographical Information

I obtained B.A. and B.S. degrees in astronomy and physics at the University of Texas at Austin (1993) and obtained a PhD in astronomy at the University of Arizona (1998).

Research Interests

I use ground- and space-based telescopes operating at optical and infrared wavelengths to study the birth of stars, brown dwarfs, and planets. My recent research has focused on the following:

Using data from the Gaia mission to identify new stars and brown dwarfs and their circumstellar disks in the nearest young associations and star-forming regions:

The Membership and Age of the Planet-hosting Young Star IRAS 04125+2902 (2025)

A Census of the Beta Pic Moving Group and Other Nearby Associations with Gaia (2024)

A Census of the TW Hya Association with Gaia (2023)

A Census of the Taurus Star-forming Region and Neighboring Associations with Gaia (2023)

Spectroscopy of Candidate Members of the Sco-Cen Complex (2022)

A Census of the Circumstellar Disk Populations in the Sco-Cen Complex (2022)

A Census of the Stellar Populations in the Sco-Cen Complex (2022)

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to search for the least massive brown dwarfs in nearby star-forming regions:

A New Spectral Class of Brown Dwarfs at the Bottom of the IMF in IC 348 (2025)

The Initial Mass Function of Stars and Brown Dwarfs in the Upper Sco Association (2025)

Candidates for Substellar Members of the Orion Nebula Cluster from JWST/NIRCam (2024)

JWST/NIRSpec Observations of Brown Dwarfs in the Orion Nebula Cluster (2024)

A JWST Survey for Planetary Mass Brown Dwarfs in IC 348 (2024)

Using JWST to study the first directly imaged planetary mass companion and the coldest known brown dwarf:

JWST/NIRSpec Observations of the Coldest Known Brown Dwarf (2024)

JWST/NIRSpec Observations of the Planetary Mass Companion TWA 27B (2023)