A giant planet candidate near a young brown dwarf

We present deep VLT/NACO infrared imaging and spectroscopic observations of the brown dwarf 2MASSWJ 1207334-393254, obtained during our on-going adaptive optics survey of southern young, nearby associations. This ~25 $M_{\rm{Jup}}$ brown dwarf, located ~70 pc from Earth, has been recently identified as a member of the TW Hydrae Association (age ~ 8 Myr). Using adaptive optics infrared wavefront sensing to acquire sharp images of its circumstellar environment, we discovered a very faint and very red object at a close separation of ~780 mas (~55 AU). Photometry in the H, ${K}_{\rm s}$ and ${L}'$ bands and upper limit in J-band are compatible with a spectral type L5-L9.5. Near-infrared spectroscopy is consistent with this spectral type estimate. Different evolutionary models predict an object within the planetary regime with a mass of ${M}=5\pm2~M_{\rm{Jup}}$ and an effective temperature of ${T}_{\rm{eff}}=1250\pm200$ K