542,106 research outputs found
Properties of ultra-cool dwarfs with Gaia. An assessment of the accuracy for the temperature determination
We aimed to assess the accuracy of the Gaia teff and logg estimates as
derived with current models and observations. We assessed the validity of
several inference techniques for deriving the physical parameters of ultra-cool
dwarf stars. We used synthetic spectra derived from ultra-cool dwarf models to
construct (train) the regression models. We derived the intrinsic uncertainties
of the best inference models and assessed their validity by comparing the
estimated parameters with the values derived in the bibliography for a sample
of ultra-cool dwarf stars observed from the ground. We estimated the total
number of ultra-cool dwarfs per spectral subtype, and obtained values that can
be summarised (in orders of magnitude) as 400000 objects in the M5-L0 range,
600 objects between L0 and L5, 30 objects between L5 and T0, and 10 objects
between T0 and T8. A bright ultra-cool dwarf (with teff=2500 K and \logg=3.5
will be detected by Gaia out to approximately 220 pc, while for teff=1500 K
(spectral type L5) and the same surface gravity, this maximum distance reduces
to 10-20 pc. The RMSE of the prediction deduced from ground-based spectra of
ultra-cool dwarfs simulated at the Gaia spectral range and resolution, and for
a Gaia magnitude G=20 is 213 K and 266 K for the models based on k-nearest
neighbours and Gaussian process regression, respectively. These are total
errors in the sense that they include the internal and external errors, with
the latter caused by the inability of the synthetic spectral models (used for
the construction of the regression models) to exactly reproduce the observed
spectra, and by the large uncertainties in the current calibrations of spectral
types and effective temperatures.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysic
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