We present the discovery of a bright ( J = 13.1 mag ) nearby L6 dwarf found in a search for L-type ultracool subdwarfs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ( SDSS ) Data Release 7 .
SDSS J141624.08+134826.7 exhibits blue near-infrared colors compared to other optically-typed L6 objects , but its optical and near-infrared spectra do not show metal-poor features characteristic of known L-type ultracool subdwarfs .
Instead , SDSS J141624.08+134826.7 is probably a nearby example of the class of L dwarfs with low condensate opacities which exhibit unusually blue near-infrared colors for a given spectral type .
Its deep 1.4 and 1.9 \mu m H _ { 2 } O absorption bands , weak 2.3 \mu m CO feature , strong 0.99 \mu m FeH band , and shallow optical TiO and CaH bands resemble the spectra of other blue L dwarfs which are believed to have unusually thin or large-grained cloud structure .
The luminosity of SDSS J141624.08+134826.7 implies that it is either a high-mass brown dwarf or a low mass star , depending on its age , and its UVW space motion suggests a thin-disk membership .
With a spectrophotometric distance of 8.4 \pm 1.9 pc , SDSS J141624.08+134826.7 is one of the nearest L dwarfs to the Sun and is therefore an excellent target for high resolution imaging , spectroscopic , and astrometric follow-up observations .