The Solar Neighborhood. LVI. The RMSTAR Catalog of the Nearest 3352 M Dwarf Systems and 305 of Their Wide Companions
6 affiliations
- 1Georgia State University
- 2RECONS Institute
- 3NSF Graduate Research Fellow
- 4Bridgewater State University
- 5Center for Astrophysics ∣ Harvard & Smithsonian
- 6Five College Astronomy Department
Abstract
We present the RMSTAR (RECONS M STAR) catalog, a 25 pc volume-limited and effectively volume-complete sample of the nearest 3352 M dwarf systems and their 305 wide stellar and 9 brown dwarf companions. RMSTAR has been created using only results from Gaia Data Releases 3 (GDR3) and 2 (GDR2), Hipparcos, and ground-based discoveries of M dwarf systems that are not available in the space-based results. The wide companions are identified using only results from GDR3 and GDR2 and have separations ρ ≥ 0 . ″ 46. There are 291 primaries with stellar companions, yielding a multiplicity rate of 8.68% ± 0.49% for these widely separated systems, with a rate of 6.86% ± 0.44% for projected separations s ≥ 30 au, where the sample of stellar companions is complete except perhaps for a few fringe cases. It is shown that the rate of stellar companions increases from the search limit of 30,000 au down to separations of 30 au, with a large set of companions to be characterized at closer separations in future work. We determine luminosity and mass functions for all stellar red dwarfs and their wide secondaries, finding that the luminosity function displays a classic turnover at M G ∼ 11, whereas the mass function is described by an exponential function that rises from 0.60 M ⊙ to the end of the stellar main sequence at 0.075 M ⊙ . We assess the large population of close, unresolved companions to M dwarfs by analyzing several Gaia parameters, identifying 1089 (30%) individual sources as having at least one of these elevated unresolved companion indication parameters.
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BibTeX
@article{leblanc2026solar,
title = {{The Solar Neighborhood. LVI. The RMSTAR Catalog of the Nearest 3352 M Dwarf Systems and 305 of Their Wide Companions}},
author = {Madison R. LeBlanc and Tim M. Johns and Todd J. Henry and Kenneth J. Slatten and Jennifer G. Winters and Wei-Chun Jao and Aman Kar and Michele L. Silverstein and Eliot Halley Vrijmoet and Casey Rush and Andrew A. Couperus},
journal = {The Astronomical Journal},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3847/1538-3881/aea907},
url = {https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aea907},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The Solar Neighborhood. LVI. The RMSTAR Catalog of the Nearest 3352 M Dwarf Systems and 305 of Their Wide Companions
AU - Madison R. LeBlanc
AU - Tim M. Johns
AU - Todd J. Henry
AU - Kenneth J. Slatten
AU - Jennifer G. Winters
AU - Wei-Chun Jao
AU - Aman Kar
AU - Michele L. Silverstein
AU - Eliot Halley Vrijmoet
AU - Casey Rush
AU - Andrew A. Couperus
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/21
JO - The Astronomical Journal
DO - 10.3847/1538-3881/aea907
UR - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aea907
AB - We present the RMSTAR (RECONS M STAR) catalog, a 25 pc volume-limited and effectively volume-complete sample of the nearest 3352 M dwarf systems and their 305 wide stellar and 9 brown dwarf companions. RMSTAR has been created using only results from Gaia Data Releases 3 (GDR3) and 2 (GDR2), Hipparcos, and ground-based discoveries of M dwarf systems that are not available in the space-based results. The wide companions are identified using only results from GDR3 and GDR2 and have separations ρ ≥ 0 . ″ 46. There are 291 primaries with stellar companions, yielding a multiplicity rate of 8.68% ± 0.49% for these widely separated systems, with a rate of 6.86% ± 0.44% for projected separations s ≥ 30 au, where the sample of stellar companions is complete except perhaps for a few fringe cases. It is shown that the rate of stellar companions increases from the search limit of 30,000 au down to separations of 30 au, with a large set of companions to be characterized at closer separations in future work. We determine luminosity and mass functions for all stellar red dwarfs and their wide secondaries, finding that the luminosity function displays a classic turnover at M G ∼ 11, whereas the mass function is described by an exponential function that rises from 0.60 M ⊙ to the end of the stellar main sequence at 0.075 M ⊙ . We assess the large population of close, unresolved companions to M dwarfs by analyzing several Gaia parameters, identifying 1089 (30%) individual sources as having at least one of these elevated unresolved companion indication parameters.
SN - 0004-6256
SN - 1538-3881
ER -