Spectroscopy of Putative Brown Dwarfs in Taurus
  Quanz and coworkers have reported the discovery of the coolest known member
of the Taurus star-forming complex (L2+/-0.5) and Barrado and coworkers have
identified a possible protostellar binary brown dwarf in the same region. We
have performed infrared spectroscopy on the former and the brighter component
of the latter to verify their substellar nature. The resulting spectra do not
exhibit the strong steam absorption bands that are expected for cool objects,
demonstrating that they are not young brown dwarfs. The optical magnitudes and
colors for these sources are also indicative of background stars rather than
members of Taurus. Although the fainter component of the candidate protostellar
binary lacks spectroscopy, we conclude that it is a galaxy rather than a
substellar member of Taurus based on its colors and the constraints on its
proper motion.
