Distinguishing Stars from Brown Dwarfs: An Overview of the HLIMIT Project

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

Where is the end of the stellar main sequence? Although the theory of brown dwarfs and Very Low Mass (VLM) stars has become quite sophisticated, this basic question still eludes observational astronomy. The HLIMIT project seeks to thoroughly characterize the stellar/brown dwarf boundary by obtaining optical and infrared photometry, spectroscopy, and trigonometric parallaxes for a well-defined sample of more than 100 objects of spectral types M5V through L5V within 25 parsecs of the Sun. A second component of the project seeks to resolve suspected nearby VLM binaries and obtain dynamical masses through AO orbital mapping. When the trigonometric parallaxes, photometry, and dynamical masses are combined, the result will be a comprehensive set of color-magnitude diagrams as well as a bolometrically corrected HR diagram, all of which will be punctuated by benchmark binaries with dynamical masses. By undertaking such a comprehensive project, we will eventually be able to calibrate the mass-luminosity relation at the stellar/brown dwarf transition region, and finally distinguish stars from brown dwarfs from an observational perspective. This work is support by the Space Telescope Science Institute, NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, and Georgia State University.

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