Faint Stars and Bright Lights

Our Stellar Neighborhood

• ~300 stars within 10 pc (33 ly)
  typical very empty space
• potentially the most complete, best studied sample

M dwarfs are the dominant stellar population

• 75% of stars in the solar neighborhood
• about half the Galaxy's total stellar mass
• we are just beginning to understand them

Interesting questions:

• Is the local census complete?
• Where are the brown dwarfs (BDs)?
• What does a BD look like?
• How many planets are there?
• physics of M stars. planets <--- star formation

How we can find new nearby stars, BD's and planets.

What we know now.

What we are doing locally, and how long can we do it?

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