Abstract
The empirical mass-luminosity relation at Mv is presented for stars with masses 0.08-0.20 M⊙ based upon new observations made with Fine Guidance Sensor 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. The targets are nearby, red dwarf multiple systems in which the magnitude differences are typically measured to ±0.1 mag or better. The Mv values are generated using the best available parallaxes and are also accurate to ±0.1 mag, because the errors in the magnitude differences are the dominant error source. In several cases this is the first time the observed sub-arcsecond multiples have been resolved at optical wavelengths. The mass-luminosity relation defined by these data reaches to Mv = 18.5 and provides a powerful empirical test for discriminating the lowest mass stars from high-mass brown dwarfs at wavelengths shorter than 1 μm.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 864-873 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Astrophysical Journal |
Volume | 512 |
Issue number | 2 PART 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 20 1999 |
Keywords
- Astrometry
- Binaries: close
- Stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs
- Stars: luminosity function, mass function
- Stars: statistics
- Techniques: interferometric
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science