We present observations of a circumstellar disk that is inclined close to edge-on around a young brown dwarf in the Taurus star-forming region .
Using data obtained with SpeX at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility , we find that the slope of the 0.8-2.5 µm spectrum of the brown dwarf 2MASS J04381486+2611399 can not be reproduced with a photosphere reddened by normal extinction .
Instead , the slope is consistent with scattered light , indicating that circumstellar material is occulting the brown dwarf .
By combining the SpeX data with mid-infrared photometry and spectroscopy from the Spitzer Space Telescope and previously published millimeter data from Scholz and coworkers , we construct the spectral energy distribution for 2MASS J04381486+2611399 and model it in terms of a young brown dwarf surrounded by an irradiated accretion disk .
The presence of both silicate absorption at 10 µm and silicate emission at 11 µm constrains the inclination of the disk to be \sim 70 \arcdeg , i.e . \sim 20 \arcdeg from edge-on .
Additional evidence of the high inclination of this disk is provided by our detection of asymmetric bipolar extended emission surrounding 2MASS J04381486+2611399 in high-resolution optical images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope .
According to our modeling for the SED and images of this system , the disk contains a large inner hole that is indicative of a transition disk ( R _ { in } \approx 58 R _ { \star } \approx 0.275 AU ) and is somewhat larger than expected from embryo ejection models ( R _ { out } = 20 -40 AU vs . R _ { out } < 10 -20 AU ) .