Astrometry and Photometry for $\approx$1000 L, T, and Y Dwarfs from the UKIRT Hemisphere Survey

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive astrometry and photometry for nearly 1000 late-type dwarfs from the UKIRT Hemisphere Survey, integrating data from multiple sources to enhance the understanding of their properties and motions.

Contribution

It offers a homogeneous database of photometry and astrometry for late-type dwarfs, including proper motions, spectral types, and identification of objects with interesting kinematic properties.

Findings

Proper motions with median uncertainty of ~3.6 mas/yr.

Good agreement of UHS proper motions with Gaia DR3, Pan-STARRS, and CatWISE 2020.

Identification of objects with large tangential velocities and potential young association members.

Abstract

We present positions, proper motions, and near-infrared photometry for 966 known objects with spectral types later than M observed as part of the the UKIRT Hemisphere Survey (UHS). We augment the photometry and astrometry from UHS with information from Gaia DR3, Pan-STARRS DR2, and CatWISE 2020 to produce a database of homogeneous photometry and astrometry for this sample. The multi-epoch survey strategy of UHS allows us to determine proper motions for most sources, with a median proper motion uncertainty of $\sim$3.6 mas yr$^{-1}$. Our UHS proper motion measurements are generally in good agreement with those from Gaia DR3, Pan-STARRS, and CatWISE 2020, with UHS proper motions typically more precise than those from CatWISE 2020 and Pan-STARRS but not Gaia DR3. We critically analyze publicly available spectra for 406 members of this sample and provide updated near-infrared spectral types for $\sim$100 objects. We determine typical colors as a function of spectral type and provide absolute magnitude vs. spectral type relations for UHS $J$- and $K$-band photometry. Using newly determined proper motions, we highlight several objects of interest, such as objects with large tangential velocities, widely separated co-moving companions, and potential members of young nearby associations.