The POKEMON Speckle Survey of Nearby M-dwarfs

The POKEMON (Pervasive Overview of Kompanions of Every M-dwarf in Our Neighborhood) survey of nearby M-dwarfs intends to inspect, at diffraction-limited resolution, every low-mass star out to 15pc, along with selected additional objects to 25pc. The primary emphasis of the survey is the detection of low-mass companions to these M-dwarfs for refinement of the low-mass star multiplicity rate. Given the priority these targets will have for upcoming exoplanet studies using TESS and JWST - and the degree to which initially undetected multiplicity has affected Kepler results - a comprehensive survey of our nearby low-mass neighbors will produce a homogenous, complete catalog of fundamental utility. Prior knowledge of those secondary objects - or robust non-detections, as will be captured by this survey - will help immediately clarify the nature of exoplanet transit detections from these current and upcoming missions. POKEMON is using Lowell Observatory's 4.3-m Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) with the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI) speckle camera, along with the NN-Explore Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI) speckle imager on 3.5-m WIYN; the survey takes advantage of the extremely rapid observing cadence rates possible with WIYN and (especially) DCT. The current status and results are from the first 20+ nights of observing.