[Previous] | [Session 98] | [Next]
P. Plait (NASA's GSFC)
Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) observations are being analyzed to search for late main sequence and brown dwarfs. Data already available show that many STIS parallel fields contain candidate stars and that spectral classification of these stars out to large distances is possible. Stars later than M4 can be detected at distances of greater than 3000 parsecs. On brighter stars, absolute photometry can be obtained to better than 1% accuracy, which can in turn be used to find distances. Specifically, M dwarfs in the STIS parallels have already been found at distances larger than 4000 parsecs, corresponding to heights of 1000-3000 parsecs above the Galactic plane. These observations have important implications for the low-mass end of the luminosity functions in the solar neighborhood and out of the galactic plane, which are still not well understood.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to www.badastronomy.com. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: plait@abba.gsfc.nasa.gov