SONYC census of substellar objects in Lupus 3

We present a new imaging and spectroscopic survey conducted in the young (~1 Myr), nearby (~200 pc) star-forming region Lupus 3. Deep optical and near-infrared images were obtained with MOSAIC-II and NEWFIRM at the CTIO 4 m telescope, covering ~1.4 deg^2^ on the sky.

The i-band completeness limit of 20.3 mag is equivalent to 0.009-0.02 M_{sun}_, for A_V_<=5. Photometry and 11-12 yr baseline proper motions were used to select candidate low-mass members of Lupus 3. We performed a spectroscopic follow-up of 123 candidates, using VIMOS at the Very Large Telescope, and we identify 7 probable members, among which 4 have spectral type later than M6.0 and T_eff_<=3000 K, i.e., are probably substellar in nature.