The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey SLoWPoKES Catalog

We present preliminary results from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) SLoWPoKES Catalog. The Sloan Low-mass Wide Pairs of Kinematically Equivalent Stars (SLoWPoKES) catalog contains 1342 widely separated, low-mass binary pairs that have common proper motions and similar distances. One of the limitations of the original SLoWPoKES catalog is that most of the stars do not have spectroscopic observations. We overcame this limitation by including SLoWPoKES binary candidates as spectroscopic targets in two of the SDSS III BOSS ancillary programs. BOSS completed spectroscopic observations of both members of 370 SLoWPoKES systems. Of these, 237 pairs, and one triple star system, have late-K or M dwarf members with radial velocities matching to 2σ, confirming their status as co-moving systems in three dimensions. Our scientific goals are to investigate how magnetic activity varies with binary separation, and use the BOSS spectra to constrain the latest techniques for calculating the metallicity of low-mass stars. For our catalog, we analyzed many spectral features including Hα emission (a tracer of magnetic activity) and numerous molecular bands (e.g. TiO, CaH,O2, etc.) and atomic lines (e.g. Na, K, etc.). We also extracted photometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and computed 3D space motions and distances for a subset of our sample.