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Session 108 - The Galactic Stellar Disk & Halo.
Display session, Saturday, January 10
Exhibit Hall,
We present Cousins (V)RI photometry for 73 nearby star candidates, mostly high-proper motion stars from the LHS and NLTT catalogs, and surveys of Wroblewski amp; Torres. Almost all of the stars appear to be M dwarfs or subdwarfs, several of which are probably closer than 10 pc. Of the 73 stars observed, 55 have no previous published data in any standard system. The sample of nearby M dwarfs is known to be woefully incomplete out to 8 pc, even if it is assumed to be complete out to 5 pc. Since M dwarfs are by far the most common type of star, the identification of a more complete sample of these stars in the solar neighborhood has long been seen as necessary.
Because of the large investment of time and effort that is needed to obtain a distance through trigonometric parallax, it is highly desirable to produce a list of probable nearby stars from the large number of possible candidates which arise from proper motion surveys. To provide candidates for our CCD parallax program, we have undertaken a limited program to obtain photometric parallaxes using VRI photometry for southern red stars from the NLTT, as well as additional candidates from the LHS.
We have also obtained VRI photometry for 37 faint, high proper motion stars from the surveys of Wroblewski amp; Torres. Their surveys, while limited in area, go deeper than the LHS and NLTT, although no color information exists for the stars in their surveys. Of the 37 stars, 8 are estimated to lie within 25 pc of the Sun, and so are new members of the Catalog of Nearby Stars.
We thank MSSSO for continued support for this program over the last decade, and acknowledge the support of the NSF through several grants, the most recent of which is AST-95-30831.
