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T.J. Henry (Georgia State University), RECONS Team
The nearby stars have gained new respect and interest in recent years because of their importance in such fundamental questions as ``What is the nature of the Sun's neighbors?", ``Are there planets circling nearby stars?", and ``Is there life on any of those planets?"
The RECONS (Research Consortium on Nearby Stars) effort to discover new solar neighbors via astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic work will be presented. A large southern sky parallax effort known as CTIOPI (CTIO Parallax Investigation) has been carried out since 1999 under the auspices of the NOAO Surveys Program. CTIOPI has revealed more than 100 new stars closer than 25 parsecs, and more than a dozen new members of the elite 10 parsec sample. The impact of these new red, white, and brown dwarf neighbors on the luminosity and mass functions for the local Galactic population will be discussed. The first hints of astrometric perturbations due to low mass companions are now being detected and will also be presented.
This work has been supported by the NASA/NSF NStars Project, NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, and by Georgia State University.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.chara.gsu.edu/RECONS. 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: thenry@chara.gsu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.