New Neighbors: Parallaxes of 18 nearby stars selected from the LSPM-north catalog

TL;DR

This study provides precise parallax measurements for 18 nearby stars from the LSPM-north catalog, confirming their distances and revealing new multiple star systems and potential unresolved binaries.

Contribution

First parallax measurements for these stars, confirming their proximity and discovering new multiple star systems and candidate unresolved doubles.

Findings

16 stars within 16 parsecs, including 3 within 10 parsecs

Discovery of a triple star system and a resolved binary pair

Identification of two overluminous stars as potential unresolved multiples

Abstract

We present astrometric parallaxes for 18 suspected nearby stars selected from the LSPM-north proper motion catalog. Sixteen objects are confirmed to be main sequence M dwarfs within 16 parsecs of the Sun, including three stars (LSPM J0011+5908, LSPM J0330+5413, LSPM J0510+2714) which lie just within the 10 parsec horizon. Two other targets (LSPM J1817+1328, LSPM J2325+1403) are confirmed to be nearby white dwarfs at distances of 14 and 22 parsecs, respectively. One of our targets, the common proper motion pair LSPM J0405+7116E + LSPM J0405+7116W, is revealed to be a triple system, with the western component resolved into a pair of 16th magnitude stars (LSPM J0405+7116W-A and LSPM J0405+7116W-B) with a 0.7"+/-0.1" angular separation. We find two stars (LSPM J1314+1320 and LSPM J1757+7042) to be significantly overluminous for their colors, and suggest that these may be unresolved doubles/multiples.