Stellar multiplicity is correlated with many stellar properties, yet multiplicity measurements have proven difficult for the M dwarfs—the most common type of star in our galaxy—due to their faintness and the fact that a reasonably complete inventory of later M dwarfs did not exist until recently. We have therefore carried out the Pervasive Overview of "Kompanions" of Every M dwarf in Our Neighborhood (POKEMON) survey, which made use of the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument on the 4.3 m Lowell Discovery Telescope, along with the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Stellar Speckle Imager on the 3.5 m WIYN telescope. The POKEMON sample is volume limited from M0V through M9V out to 15 pc, with additional brighter targets at larger distances. In total, 1125 targets were observed. New discoveries were presented in the first paper in the series. In this second paper in the series, we present all detected companions, gauge our astrometric and photometric precision, and compare our filtered and filterless speckle observations. We find that the majority (58.9%) of the companions we detect in our speckle images are not resolved in Gaia, demonstrating the need for high-resolution imaging in addition to long-term astrometric monitoring. Additionally, we find that the majority (73.2%) of simulated stellar companions would be detectable by our speckle observations. Specifically within 100 au, we find that 70.3% of simulated companions are recovered. Finally, we discuss future directions of the POKEMON survey.
The POKEMON Speckle Survey of Nearby M Dwarfs. II. Observations of 1125 Targets
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
© 2023. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous reviewer, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Chris Gelino, Alex Polanski, Mark Popinchalk, and Frederick Hahne for their insightful contributions to this manuscript. We are also thankful to the army of TOs at the LDT and the WIYN Telescope for all of their assistance during our 50 nights of observing.
This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (grant No. 80NM0018D0004). This research was supported by NSF grant No. AST-1616084 awarded to G.T.v.B. and NASA grant No. 18-2XRP18_2-0007 awarded to DRC.
These results made use of the Lowell Discovery Telescope at Lowell Observatory. Lowell is a private, nonprofit institution dedicated to astrophysical research and public appreciation of astronomy and operates the LDT in partnership with Boston University, the University of Maryland, the University of Toledo, Northern Arizona University, and Yale University. Lowell Observatory sits at the base of mountains sacred to tribes throughout the region. We honor their past, present, and future generations, who have lived here for millennia and will forever call this place home.
These results are also based on observations from Kitt Peak National Observatory, the NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab Prop. ID: 2018B-0126; PI: C. Clark), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The authors are honored to be permitted to conduct astronomical research on Iolkam Du'ag (Kitt Peak), a mountain with particular significance to the Tohono O'odham. Data presented herein were obtained at the WIYN Observatory from telescope time allocated to NN-EXPLORE through the scientific partnership of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory. Observations in the paper made use of the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet and Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI). NESSI was funded by the NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program and the NASA Ames Research Center. NESSI was built at the Ames Research Center by Steve B. Howell, Nic Scott, Elliott P. Horch, and Emmett Quigley.
This work presents results from the European Space Agency (ESA) space mission. Gaia data are being processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC). Funding for the DPAC is provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia MultiLateral Agreement (MLA). The Gaia mission website is https://cosmos.esa.int/gaia. The Gaia archive website is https://archives.esac.esa.int/gaia.
This work has used data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (Skrutskie et al. 2019), which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, funded by NASA and NSF.
This research has made use of the Exoplanet Follow-up Observation Program (ExoFOP, DOI:10.26134/ExoFOP5) website, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the Exoplanet Exploration Program.
Information was collected from several additional large database efforts: the Simbad database and the VizieR catalog access tool, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France; NASA's Astrophysics Data System; and the Washington Double Star Catalog maintained at the US Naval Observatory.
Facilities
LDT(DSSI) - , WIYN(NESSI) - Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO Telescope
Software References
Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013), Astroquery (Ginsburg et al. 2019), IPython (Pérez & Granger 2007), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), NumPy (Harris et al. 2020), Pandas (McKinney et al. 2010), SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020)
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1538-3881
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
- National Science Foundation
- AST-1616084
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 18-2XRP18_2-0007
- NSF's NOIRLab
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)