Low Mass Template Spectra from SDSS

We present mean template spectra of low mass dwarfs as observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). These extremely high signal-to-noise templates result from co-adding observations of stars with similar spectral types. We make use of ∼ 12,000 unique low mass stellar spectra to construct a set of templates spanning the spectral types, M0-L2. We measure the spectral and photometric properties of these mean templates, and report on H-alpha emission (due to chromospheric activity) and molecular band strengths. These pristine spectra are suitable for use as radial velocity cross-correlation templates as well as illuminating many of the mean properties of low mass stars.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of NSF grant AST02-05875 and NASA ADP grant NAG5-13111.