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Searching for M-Dwarf Stars

QWSSI on the Lowell Discovery Telescope

In partnership with Dr. Elliott Horch of Southern Connecticut State University, van Belle has led the effort of carrying out the Pervasive Overview of `Kompanions’ of Every M-dwarf in Our Neighborhood (POKEMON) survey using his Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI) – and with DSSI have imaged every such M-dwarf out to 15 parsecs, roughly 1,200 in total, resulting in over 30 new companions being detected. To extend this work even further, we recently have deployed to LDT an upgraded speckle camera, the Quad-camera Wavefront-Sensing Speckle Imager (QWSSI), which follows in DSSI’s footsteps but advances speckle imaging even further with greater wavelength coverage and advanced sensing of atmospheric distortion. The new instrument will allow us to further leverage the unique capabilities of LDT at the frontiers of spatial resolution.