Searching for New Ultracool Dwarfs in the Southern Skies
Abstract
Low-mass dwarfs are subsolar objects with less than 50% the mass of the Sun (spectral types M and later). These dwarfs make up the peak of the mass function, cross the boundary between stellar and substellar objects, and have extremely long lifetimes on the main sequence. Low-mass dwarfs are important tracers of galactic evolution, and prime candidates for exoplanets searches (e.g., TRAPPIST-1). Low-mass dwarfs in the Northern hemisphere have been thoroughly cataloged with the help of several surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). However, the Southern hemisphere is still extremely incomplete due to the lack of an SDSS equivalent. The SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey serves to rectify the problem and aims to be as comprehensive as SDSS. We aim to use existing samples of known low-mass dwarfs and red giants to find the essential criteria for classification and separation (e.g., color, magnitude, morphology) using machine learning algorithms. Using machine learning algorithms, we then apply our criteria to the SkyMapper survey data to classify new low-mass dwarfs.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23325942C