This work will conduct a survey of nearby low-mass stars and Brown Dwarfs using the Pan-STARRS 1 survey. This will provide a census of kinematically-selected high-velocity low-mass stars and substellar objects, including parallaxes, spectral type classifications and luminosity functions of several hundred low-mass objects within 25 parsecs of the Sun.
Brown Dwarfs are substellar objects which have more mass than planets, but not enough mass to sustain hydrogen fusion in their cores. These and other low-mass stellar objects, such as M-dwarfs, are very poorly understood, yet may play important roles for understanding star and planet formation. Many of the objects discovered in the solar neighborhood by this study will be prime targets for searches of exoplanets in habitable zones, regions where conditions are right for water to exist in the liquid form. The team will use telescopes in Hawaii (Pan-STARRS 1, CFHT, UH 88?, IRTF, Gemini) to obtain photometry and spectroscopy at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. This work will involve the participation of graduate and undergraduate students, who will be trained in scientific research, including data-mining techniques. techniques.
