Meeting the Neighbours

A 2MASS-based survey of stars and brown dwarfs within 20 parsecs of the Sun

Daisy: the brown dwarf mascot
... bridging the gap .....

The Programme

The overall aim of our programme is to use data from the 2MASS near-infrared sky survey, both by itself and in combination with other catalogues, to identify previously unrecognised stellar and sub-stellar constituents of the Solar Neighbourhood. Our survey concentrates on dwarfs with spectral types later than M0, with the goal of obtaining as complete a catalogue as possible of those objects within 20 parsecs of the Sun. This programme is part of the NASA/NSF NStars initiative, which is also funding a number of other projects, which address a variety of other issues concerning the nearest stars. A shortened version of the original proposal, adapted in some respects to take account of more recent developments, is available in postscript form here.

Rather than working on a single, monolithic programme, our efforts are directed towards a number of individual projects using a variety of techniques to search for hitherto-undiscovered nearby low-mass dwarfs. The background to the development of those techniques and an outline of the individual projects are given at the following links.
The projects:


Since all of these projects are in progress at present, few of the associated pages can be considered as complete. Both quantitative results and figures are liable to be updated frequently. Published results from these programmes are collected on this page


Personnel: Investigators and Collaborators (formal and informal)

Fifteen scientists, including undergraduates, graduate students, professorial faculty and observatory staff scientists have been involved at some level in this project.

I. Neill Reid
Space Telescope Science Institute & University of Pennsylvania

Kelle L. Cruz
Univ. of Pennsylvania, Caltech & Hunter College, New York
James Liebert
University of Arizona
J. Davy Kirkpatrick
Infrared Processing & Analysis Center, Caltech
John E. Gizis
Infrared Processing & Analysis Center, Caltech & University of Delaware
David G. Monet
U.S. Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station
David A. Golimowski
Johns Hopkins University
Todd J. Henry
Georgia State University

Christina Williams
Johns Hopkins University
Patrick Lowrance
Infrared Processing & Analysis Center, Caltech
Adam J. Burgasser
Caltech --> University of California at Los Angeles
David Koerner
Northern Arizona University
Mike McElwain
University of Pennsylvania --> UCLA
Peter Allen
University of Pennsylvania & Penn. State
Chris G. Tinney
Anglo-Australian Observatory
David Kilkenny
South African Astronomical Observatory

Index INR home page


page by Neill Reid, last updated 22/02/2002