Abstract:
There have now been over 600 brown dwarfs discovered in our solar neighbourhood; yet evolutionary and atmospheric models are struggling to accuratly reproduce observations. In an attempt to improve our understanding and aid such models, we take an alternative approach and search for 'benchmark' brown dwarfs, whos' properties can be measures directly or inferred, with no need to reference models. I report on our current search for benchmark brown dwarfs as members of widely separated binary systems and describe our findings to date.