A Spectroscopic Survey of M Dwarfs within 100 Parsecs of the Sun
Abstract
Low mass M dwarfs are the dominant stellar component in the Universe. Their ubiquity and longevity make them ideal tracers of galactic populations. Using 12 Schmidt plates from both northern and southern galactic hemispheres, we constructed a sample of M dwarfs to distances of about 100 pc, to investigate the dependence of magnetic activity on location in the Galaxy. We have also investigated the kinematics of active and non-active M dwarfs at various distances from the Galactic plane. We find that there is no statistically significant variation in activity for equidistant locations above and below the plane. We also confirm that active stars are a younger dynamical population.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of NSF grant AST02-05875 and NASA ADP grant NAG5-13111.- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2004
- Bibcode:
- 2004AAS...205.5506B