- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/878/134
- Title:
- HARPS and X-shooter spectra of Southern M dwarfs
- Short Name:
- J/ApJ/878/134
- Date:
- 25 Oct 2021 00:49:19
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We present the homogeneous analysis of a sample of Southern early-type M dwarfs in the solar neighborhood (d<60pc). We used the MCAL technique to derive the effective temperature Teff, metallicity [Fe/H], and activity index i_a_(H_alpha_) of 420 M stars using HARPS spectra. The effective temperature Teff, surface gravity logg, metallicity [Fe/H], and projected rotational velocity V_rot_sini of 153 M0-M6 dwarfs were determined by fitting the observed intermediate-resolution spectra from the VIS arm of VLT/X-shooter with a grid of BT-Settl stellar atmosphere models. We estimated the typical uncertainties of the fit with X-shooter spectra by varying region-to-region results by {sigma}T_eff_~50K, {sigma}logg~0.2, and {sigma}[Fe/H]~0.2dex. Photometric verification of Teff for the 295 stars from the HARPS sample and the 61 stars from the X-shooter sample is also provided. We compared our results from different methods to estimate absolute uncertainty in determining the physical properties of M dwarfs.
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Search Results
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/600/A13
- Title:
- HARPS M dwarf sample magnetic activity
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/600/A13
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Atmospheric magnetic fields in stars with convective envelopes heat stellar chromospheres, and thus increase the observed flux in the CaII H and K doublet. Starting with the historical Mount Wilson monitoring program, these two spectral lines have been widely used to trace stellar magnetic activity, and as a proxy for rotation period (Prot) and consequently for stellar age. Monitoring stellar activity has also become essential in filtering out false-positives due to magnetic activity in extra-solar planet surveys. The CaII emission is traditionally quantified through the R'_HK_-index, which compares the chromospheric flux in the doublet to the overall bolometric flux of the star. Much work has been done to characterize this index for FGK-dwarfs, but M dwarfs - the most numerous stars of the Galaxy - were left out of these analyses and no calibration of their CaII H and K emission to an R'_HK_ exists to date. We set out to characterize the magnetic activity of the low- and very-low-mass stars by providing a calibration of the R'_HK_-index that extends to the realm of M dwarfs, and by evaluating the relationship between R'_HK_ and the rotation period.. We calibrated the bolometric and photospheric factors for M dwarfs to properly transform the S-index (which compares the flux in the CaII H and K lines to a close spectral continuum) into the R'_HK_. We monitored magnetic activity through the CaII H and K emission lines in the HARPS M dwarf sample.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJS/200/15
- Title:
- HARPS-TERRA project. I.
- Short Name:
- J/ApJS/200/15
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Doppler spectroscopy has uncovered or confirmed all the known planets orbiting nearby stars. Two main techniques are used to obtain precision Doppler measurements at optical wavelengths. The first approach is the gas cell method, which consists of least-squares matching of the spectrum of iodine imprinted on the spectrum of the star. The second method relies on the construction of a stabilized spectrograph externally calibrated in wavelength. The most precise stabilized spectrometer in operation is the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), operated by the European Southern Observatory in La Silla Observatory, Chile. The Doppler measurements obtained with HARPS are typically obtained using the cross-correlation function (CCF) technique. This technique consists of multiplying the stellar spectrum by a weighted binary mask and finding the minimum of the product as a function of the Doppler shift. It is known that CCF is suboptimal in exploiting the Doppler information in the stellar spectrum. Here we describe an algorithm to obtain precision radial velocity measurements using least-squares matching of each observed spectrum to a high signal-to-noise ratio template derived from the same observations. This algorithm is implemented in our software HARPS-TERRA (Template-Enhanced Radial velocity Re-analysis Application). New radial velocity measurements on a representative sample of stars observed by HARPS are used to illustrate the benefits of the proposed method. We show that, compared with CCF, template matching provides a significant improvement in accuracy, especially when applied to M dwarfs.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/549/A109
- Title:
- HARPS XXXI. The M-dwarf sample
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/549/A109
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Searching for planets around stars with different masses helps us to assess the outcome of planetary formation for different initial conditions. The low-mass M dwarfs are also the most frequent stars in our Galaxy and potentially therefore, the most frequent planet hosts. We present observations of 102 southern nearby M dwarfs, using a fraction of our guaranteed time on the ESO/HARPS spectrograph. We observed for 460 h and gathered 1965 precise (~1-3m/s) radial velocities (RVs), spanning the period from Feb. 11, 2003 to Apr. 1, 2009.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/155/114
- Title:
- HAT-TR-318-007: a double-lined M dwarf binary
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/155/114
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- We report the discovery by the HATNet survey of HAT-TR-318-007, a P=3.34395390+/-0.00000020 day period detached double-lined M dwarf binary with total secondary eclipses. We combine radial velocity (RV) measurements from TRES/FLWO 1.5 m and time-series photometry from HATNet, FLWO 1.2 m, BOS 0.8 m, and NASA K2 Campaign 5, to determine the masses and radii of the component stars: M_A_=0.448+/-0.011 M_{sun}_^N^, M_B_=0.2721_-0.0042_^+0.0041^ M_{sun}_^N^, R_A_=0.4548_-0.0036_^+0.0035^ R_{sun}_^N^, and R_B_=0.2913_-0.0024_^+0.0023^ R_{sun}_^N^. We obtained a FIRE/Magellan near-infrared spectrum of the primary star during a total secondary eclipse, and we use this to obtain disentangled spectra of both components. We determine spectral types of ST_A_=M3.71+/-0.69 and ST_B_=M5.01+/-0.73 and effective temperatures of T_eff,A_=3190+/-110 K and T_eff,B_=3100+/-110 K for the primary and secondary star, respectively. We also measure a metallicity of [Fe/H]=+0.298+/-0.080 for the system. We find that the system has a small, but significant, nonzero eccentricity of 0.0136+/-0.0026. The K2 light curve shows a coherent variation at a period of 3.41315_-0.00032_^+0.00030^ days, which is slightly longer than the orbital period, and which we demonstrate comes from the primary star. We interpret this as the rotation period of the primary. We perform a quantitative comparison between the Dartmouth stellar evolution models and the seven systems, including HAT-TR-318-007, that contain M dwarfs with 0.2 M_{sun}_^N^<M<0.5 M_{sun}_^N^, have metallicity measurements, and have masses and radii determined to better than 5% precision. Discrepancies between the predicted and observed masses and radii are found for three of the systems.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/148/64
- Title:
- HAZMAT. I. FUV and NUV emission in early M stars
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/148/64
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The spectral energy distribution, variability, and evolution of the high-energy radiation from an M dwarf planet host is crucial in understanding the planet's atmospheric evolution and habitability and in interpreting the planet's spectrum. The star's extreme-UV (EUV), far-UV (FUV), and near-UV (NUV) emission can chemically modify, ionize, and erode the atmosphere over time. This makes determining the lifetime exposure of such planets to stellar UV radiation critical for both the evolution of a planet's atmosphere and our potential to characterize it. Using the early M star members of nearby young moving groups, which sample critical ages in planet formation and evolution, we measure the evolution of the GALEX NUV and FUV flux as a function of age. The median UV flux remains at a "saturated" level for a few hundred million years, analogous to that observed for X-ray emission. By the age of the Hyades Cluster (650Myr), we measure a drop in UV flux by a factor of 2-3 followed by a steep drop from old (several Gyrs) field stars. This decline in activity beyond 300Myr follows roughly t^-1^. Despite this clear evolution, there remains a wide range, of 1-2 orders of magnitude, in observed emission levels at every age. These UV data supply the much-needed constraints to M dwarf upper-atmosphere models, which will provide empirically motivated EUV predictions and more accurate age-dependent UV spectra as inputs to planetary photochemical models.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/155/122
- Title:
- HAZMAT. III. Low-mass stars GALEX photometry
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/155/122
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Low-mass stars are currently the most promising targets for detecting and characterizing habitable planets in the solar neighborhood. However, the ultraviolet (UV) radiation emitted by such stars can erode and modify planetary atmospheres over time, drastically affecting their habitability. Thus, knowledge of the UV evolution of low-mass stars is critical for interpreting the evolutionary history of any orbiting planets. Shkolnik & Barman (2014, J/AJ/148/64) used photometry from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to show how UV emission evolves for early-type M stars (>0.35 M_{sun}_). In this paper, we extend their work to include both a larger sample of low-mass stars with known ages as well as M stars with lower masses. We find clear evidence that mid- and late-type M stars (0.08-0.35 M_{sun}_) do not follow the same UV evolutionary trend as early-Ms. Lower-mass M stars retain high levels of UV activity up to field ages, with only a factor of 4 decrease on average in GALEX NUV and FUV flux density between young (<50 Myr) and old (~5 Gyr) stars, compared to a factor of 11 and 31 for early-Ms in NUV and FUV, respectively. We also find that the FUV/NUV flux density ratio, which can affect the photochemistry of important planetary biosignatures, is mass- and age-dependent for early-Ms, but remains relatively constant for the mid- and late-type Ms in our sample.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/154/67
- Title:
- HAZMAT. II. Low-mass stars with GALEX UV observations
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/154/67
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The ultraviolet (UV) light from a host star influences a planet's atmospheric photochemistry and will affect interpretations of exoplanetary spectra from future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope. These effects will be particularly critical in the study of planetary atmospheres around M dwarfs, including Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone. Given the higher activity levels of M dwarfs compared to Sun-like stars, time-resolved UV data are needed for more accurate input conditions for exoplanet atmospheric modeling. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) provides multi-epoch photometric observations in two UV bands: near-ultraviolet (NUV; 1771-2831{AA}) and far-ultraviolet (FUV; 1344-1786{AA}). Within 30pc of Earth, there are 357 and 303 M dwarfs in the NUV and FUV bands, respectively, with multiple GALEX observations. Simultaneous NUV and FUV detections exist for 145 stars in both GALEX bands. Our analyses of these data show that low-mass stars are typically more variable in the FUV than the NUV. Median variability increases with later spectral types in the NUV with no clear trend in the FUV. We find evidence that flares increase the FUV flux density far more than the NUV flux density, leading to variable FUV to NUV flux density ratios in the GALEX bandpasses.The ratio of FUV to NUV flux is important for interpreting the presence of atmospheric molecules in planetary atmospheres such as oxygen and methane as a high FUV to NUV ratio may cause false-positive biosignature detections. This ratio of flux density in the GALEX bands spans three orders of magnitude in our sample, from 0.008 to 4.6, and is 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher than for G dwarfs like the Sun. These results characterize the UV behavior for the largest set of low-mass stars to date.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/632/A24
- Title:
- HeI IR triplet measurements for M dwarfs
- Short Name:
- J/A+A/632/A24
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- The HeI infrared (IR) triplet at 10830{AA} is an important activity indicator for the Sun and in solar-type stars, however, it has rarely been studied in relation to M dwarfs to date. In this study, we use the time-averaged spectra of 319 single stars with spectral types ranging from M0.0V to M9.0V obtained with the CARMENES high resolution optical and near-infrared spectrograph at Calar Alto to study the properties of the HeI IR triplet lines. In quiescence, we find the triplet in absorption with a decrease of the measured pseudo equivalent width (pEW) towards later sub-types. For stars later than M5.0V, the HeI triplet becomes undetectable in our study. This dependence on effective temperature may be related to a change in chromospheric conditions along theMdwarf sequence. When an emission in the triplet is observed, we attribute it to flaring. The absence of emission during quiescence is consistent with line formation by photo-ionisation and recombination, while flare emission may be caused by collisions within dense material. The HeI triplet tends to increase in depth according to increasing activity levels, ultimately becoming filled in; however, we do not find a correlation between the pEW(He IR) and X-ray properties. This behaviour may be attributed to the absence of very inactive stars (LX/Lbol<-5.5) in our sample or to the complex behaviour with regard to increasing depth and filling in.
- ID:
- ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/143/128
- Title:
- High-metallicity M giant candidates from SDSS
- Short Name:
- J/AJ/143/128
- Date:
- 21 Oct 2021
- Publisher:
- CDS
- Description:
- Tidal stripping and three-body interactions with the central supermassive black hole may eject stars from the Milky Way. These stars would comprise a set of "intragroup" stars (IGS) that trace the past history of interactions in our galactic neighborhood. Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7 (Cat. II/294, superseded by Cat. V/139), we identify candidate solar-metallicity red giant intragroup stars using color cuts that are designed to exclude nearby M and L dwarfs. We present 677 intragroup candidates that are selected between 300kpc and 2Mpc, and are either the reddest intragroup candidates (M7-M10) or are L dwarfs at larger distances than previously detected.
