The SMARTS Way to Explore 10000 of the Nearest Star Systems
Abstract
The nearest stars and their companions provide the fundamental framework upon which all of stellar astronomy is based, for individual stars, stellar multiples, and entire stellar populations. We live in exciting times, as our map of the Sun's neighbors becomes enriched with details of other solar systems that will ultimately play key roles in our search for life elsewhere. The RECONS (REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars, www.recons.org) team endeavors to understand the nature of the Sun's nearest stellar neighbors, both individually and as a population. We now know that 74% of nearby stars are M dwarfs and another 12% are K dwarfs, indicating that stars smaller than the Sun dominate the Milky Way population. We are using the SMARTS 0.9m and 1.5m telescopes at CTIO for two long-duration surveys of M and K dwarfs to reveal the orbital architectures of multiple systems, with the ultimate goal of understanding how the populations of companions to stars — stellar, brown dwarf, and planetary — relate to one another on spatial scales comparable to our Solar System. We have already found that M dwarfs do not have stellar companions in circular orbits beyond a few AU, while K dwarfs have a menagerie of companion types within a few AU. This effort has been supported by the NSF through grants AST-1715551 and AST-1910130 via observations made possible by the SMARTS Consortium.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23537701H