M Dwarfs, Microlensing, and the Mass Budget of the Galaxy

Details M Dwarfs, Microlensing, and the Mass Budget of the Galaxy M Dwarfs, Microlensing, and the Mass Budget of the Galaxy

1994-06-07

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9406019v1

Astrophys.J. 435 (1994) L51-L54

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Postscript file with one figure

Scientific paper

10.1086/187592

We show that faint red stars do not contribute significantly to the mass budget of the Galaxy or to microlensing statistics. Our results are obtained by analyzing two long exposures of a high-latitude field taken with the Wide Field Camera on the newly repaired {\it Hubble Space Telescope}. Stars are easily distinguished from galaxies essentially to the limiting magnitudes of the images. We find five stars with $2.03.0$. Therefore, main-sequence stars with $M_I>10$ that are above the hydrogen-burning limit in the dark halo or the spheroid contribute $<6%$ of the unseen matter. Faint red disk stars, M-dwarfs, contribute at most $ 15%$ to the mass of the disk. We parameterize the faint end of the cumulative distribution of stars, $\Phi$, as a function of luminosity $L_V$, $d\Phi/d \ln L_V \propto L_V^{-\gamma}$. For spheroid stars, $\gamma<0.32$ over the range $6

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