Astronomy Tea Talk

I will talk about the the SLoWPoKES catalogs of ultra-wide (>1000 AU), low-mass binary pairs. The initial catalog comprised of 1342 common proper motion binaries, while SLoWPoKES-II consists of >100,000 pairs albeit without proper motion matching. We used a Galactic model, based on on empirical stellar number density and space velocity distributions, to select bona fide pairs with probability of chance alignment <5%, making SLoWPoKES an efficient sample for followup observations.  The diversity—in mass, metallicity, age, and evolutionary states—of SLoWPoKES pairs makes it a valuable resource of coeval laboratories to examine and constrain the physical properties of low-mass stars. SLoWPoKES pairs show signatures of two (or more) formation modes in the distribution of the physical separation and higher-order multiplicity: neither dynamical dissipation of primordial triples/quadruples nor dynamical capture of ejected stars can explain the observed populations by itself. I will briefly talk about our efforts to calibrate the age–activity relationship in low-mass stars by leveraging the coevality of M dwarf + M dwarf and M dwarf + white dwarf systems.