The Solar Neighborhood. VIII. Discovery of New High Proper Motion Nearby Stars Using the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey

Abstract

Five new objects with proper motions between 1.0" and 2.6" yr-1 have been discovered via a new Research Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) search for high proper motion stars using the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey. The first portion of the search, discussed here, is centered on the south celestial pole and covers declinations -90° to -57.5d. Photographic photometry from SuperCOSMOS and JHKs near-infrared photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey for stars nearer than 10 pc are combined to provide a suite of new MKs-color relations useful for estimating distances to main-sequence stars. These relations are then used to derive distances to the new proper motion objects, as well as previously known stars with μ>=1.0" yr-1 (many of which have no trigonometric parallaxes) recovered during this phase of the survey. Four of the five new stars have red dwarf colors, while one is a nearby white dwarf. Two of the red dwarfs are likely to be within the RECONS 10 pc sample, and the white dwarf probably lies between 15 and 25 pc. Among the 23 known stars recovered during the search, there are three additional candidates for the RECONS sample that have no trigonometric parallaxes.