The MEarth Project is a photometric survey systematically searching the smallest stars near the Sun for transiting rocky planets. Since 2008, MEarth has taken approximately two million images of 1844 stars suspected to be mid-to-late M dwarfs. We have augmented this survey by taking nightly exposures of photometric standard stars and have utilized this data to photometrically calibrate the MEarth system, identify photometric nights, and obtain an optical magnitude with 1.5% precision for each M dwarf system. Each optical magnitude is an average over many years of data, and therefore should be largely immune to stellar variability and flaring. We combine this with trigonometric distance measurements, spectroscopic metallicity measurements, and 2MASS infrared magnitude measurements in order to derive a color-magnitude-metallicity relation across the mid-to-late M dwarf spectral sequence that can reproduce spectroscopic metallicity determinations to a precision of 0.1 dex. We release optical magnitudes and metallicity estimates for 1567 M dwarfs, many of which did not have an accurate determination of either prior to this work. For an additional 277 stars without a trigonometric parallax, we provide an estimate of the distance, assuming solar neighborhood metallicity. We find that the median metallicity for a volume-limited sample of stars within 20pc of the Sun is [Fe/H]=-0.03+/-0.008, and that 29/565 of these stars have a metallicity of [Fe/H]=-0.5 or lower, similar to the low-metallicity distribution of nearby G dwarfs. When combined with the results of ongoing and future planet surveys targeting these objects, the metallicity estimates presented here will be important for assessing the significance of any putative planet-metallicity correlation.
The aim of this work is the study of the planet-metallicity and the planet-stellar mass correlations for M dwarfs from the HARPS GTO M dwarf subsample. We use a new method that takes advantage of the HARPS high-resolution spectra to increase the precision of metallicity, using previous photometric calibrations of [Fe/H] and effective temperature as starting values.
A 'complete' sample of 174 M giants classified in the mid-1980s by Blanco (1986AJ.....91..290B) and later than subtype M0 in the NGC 6522 Baade's Window clear field has been investigated to establish some general properties of cool bulge stars. Photometric information has been obtained from the MACHO data base to search for variability and, where possible, to determine periods. Near- and mid-infrared magnitudes have been extracted from DENIS (<B/denis>) and ISOGAL (<II/243>). 46 semiregular variables (SRVs) and two irregular variables were found amongst the 174. Many M5 and all stars M6 or later show variation, whereas earlier subtypes (M1-M4) do not.
From a sample of 97 very bright M-giant stars in the Solar neighbourhood, high-quality `intrinsic' spectra in the spectral range [380-900]nm for all M-spectral subclasses of the Case and MK classification systems are obtained. The results are fitted to photospheric synthetic spectra in the range [99-12500]nm in order to infer the corresponding continua. The synthetic spectra are also compared to the intrinsic spectra. The effective temperatures are derived and mathematical spectral classification criteria are found. The (UB)j(VRI)c(JHKLM)eso photometric data of the sample are also given.
We have obtained moderate resolution (~6km/s) spectroscopy of several hundred M giant candidates selected from Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry (Cat. <II/246>). Radial velocities are presented for stars mainly in the southern Galactic hemisphere, and the primary targets have Galactic positions consistent with association to the tidal tail system of the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy.
We present reliable measurements of the metallicity distribution function (MDF) at different points along the tidal stream of the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy, based on high-resolution, echelle spectroscopy of candidate M giant members of the Sgr system.
Previous studies of planet occurrence rates largely relied on photometric stellar characterizations. In this paper, we present planet occurrence rates for mid-type M dwarfs using spectroscopy, parallaxes, and photometry to determine stellar characteristics. Our spectroscopic observations have allowed us to constrain spectral type, temperatures, and, in some cases, metallicities for 337 out of 561 probable mid-type M dwarfs in the primary Kepler field. We use a random forest classifier to assign a spectral type to the remaining 224 stars. Combining our data with Gaia parallaxes, we compute precise (~3%) stellar radii and masses, which we use to update planet parameters and occurrence rates for Kepler mid-type M dwarfs. Within the Kepler field, there are seven M3 V to M5 V stars that host 13 confirmed planets between 0.5 and 2.5 Earth radii and at orbital periods between 0.5 and 10 days. For this population, we compute a planet occurrence rate of 1.19_-0.49_^+0.70^ planets per star. For M3 V, M4 V, and M5 V, we compute planet occurrence rates of 0.86_-0.68_^+1.32^, 1.36_-1.02_^+2.30^, and 3.07_-2.49_^+5.49^ planets per star, respectively.
We present a sample of 74216 M and L dwarfs constructed from two existing catalogs of cool dwarfs spectroscopically identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We cross-matched the SDSS catalog with Gaia DR2 (Cat. I/345) to obtain parallaxes and proper motions and modified the quality cuts suggested by the Gaia Collaboration to make them suitable for late-M and L dwarfs. We also provide relations between Gaia colors and absolute magnitudes with spectral type and conclude that (G-G_RP_) has the tightest relation to spectral type for M and L dwarfs. In addition, we study magnetic activity as a function of position on the color-magnitude diagram, finding that H{alpha} magnetically active stars have, on average, redder colors and/or brighter magnitudes than inactive stars. This effect cannot be explained by youth alone and might indicate that active stars are magnetically inflated, binaries, and/or high metallicity. Moreover, we find that vertical velocity and vertical action dispersion are correlated with H{alpha} emission, confirming that these two parameters are age indicators. We also find that stars below the main sequence have high tangential velocity, which is consistent with a low metallicity and old population of stars that belong to the halo or thick disk.
We present a photometric catalog of 8,735,004 proper motion selected low-mass stars (KML-spectral types) within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) footprint, from the combined SDSS-DR10, Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) Point Source Catalog (PSC), and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) AllWISE catalog. Stars were selected using r-i, i-z, r-z, z-J, and z-W1 colors, and SDSS, WISE, and 2MASS astrometry was combined to compute proper motions. The resulting 3,518,150 stars were augmented with proper motions for 5,216,854 earlier type stars from the combined SDSS and United States Naval Observatory B1.0 catalog (USNO-B). We used SDSS+USNO-B proper motions to determine the best criteria for selecting a clean sample of stars. Only stars whose proper motions were greater than their 2-sigma uncertainty were included. Our Motion Verified Red Stars (MoVeRS) catalog is available through SDSS CasJobs and VizieR.
