2012/09/09 by Angelle Tanner, Russel White, John Bailey +6 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Educational Leadership and Practices #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0067-0049/203/1/10
Accepted to ApJ
arxiv created 2012/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2012/11/01 · arxiv updated 2015/06/11 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present the results of an infrared spectroscopic survey of 23 late-M dwarfs with the NIRSPEC echelle spectrometer on the Keck II telescope. Using telluric lines for wavelength calibration, we are able to achieve measurement precisions of down to 45 m/s for our late-M dwarfs over a one to four year-long baseline. Our sample contains two stars with RV variations of >1000 m/s. While we require more measurements to determine whether these RV variations are due to unseen planetary or stellar companions or are the result of starspots known to plague the surface of M dwarfs, we can place upper limits of <40 MJsini on the masses of any companions around those two M dwarfs with RV variations of <160 m/s at orbital periods of 10-100 days. We have also measured the rotational velocities for all the stars in our late-M dwarf sample and offer our multi-order, high-resolution spectra over 2.0 to 2.4 micron to the atmospheric modeling community to better understand the atmospheres of late-M dwarfs.