Searching for Brown Dwarfs and Extreme M Dwarfs in STIS Parallel Observations

Details Searching for Brown Dwarfs and Extreme M Dwarfs in STIS Parallel Observations Searching for Brown Dwarfs and Extreme M Dwarfs in STIS Parallel Observations

Dec 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997hst..prop.7992p&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #7992

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Hst Proposal Id #7992 Stellar Astrophysics

Scientific paper

We propose to use STIS parallel images and spectra to search for extremely late M dwarfs and brown dwarfs. Data already available show that many STIS parallel fields contain candidate stars and that spectral classification of these stars is possible. We estimate that there will be 50 late dwarfs detected in the parallels by the end of the grant period. We have performed preliminary analysis on one field specifically and found many candidates stars, two of which are at least as late as type M7 and one that may be as late as M10. Identification of spectral features is crucial to this study to distinguish M dwarfs, giants, brown dwarfs, and reddened hot stars, but is severely compromised by detector fringing which makes intrinsic spectral features very difficult or impossible to uniquely identify. Flat fielding the parallel spectra using pipeline processing will not remove the fringing, and indeed will actually worsen the situation. However, we have made a recent advance in reduction software that greatly reduces the effects of fringing, making it possible to identify the intrinsic stellar spectral features. Absolute photometry can be also performed to better than 1 to find their distance. This has important implications for the low-mass end of the luminosity function in the solar neighborhood, which is still not well understood.

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