The hunt for red dwarf binaries and hot planets in the WFCAM transit survey

Red Dwarfs are at the heart of Astronomy because they are the most abundant type of star that we know of in our Galaxy. Yet, surprisingly little is known about their formation, evolution and the nature of their companions. In this thesis I present the first results of the WFCAM Transit Survey, a unique long-time monitoring program of many thousands of red dwarfs in the infrared, where they are the brightest. By studying their properties in eclipsing binary systems it is shown that red dwarfs are of great value to simulations of low-mass star formation, binary dynamics, stellar structure and ultimately the fundamental properties of Earth-like planets.Interstellar matter and star formatio

J-band variability of M dwarfs in the WFCAM Transit Survey

We present an analysis of the photometric variability of M dwarfs in the Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) Transit Survey. Although periodic light-curve variability in low mass stars is generally dominated by photospheric star spot activity, M dwarf variability in the J band has not been as thoroughly investigated as at visible wavelengths. Spectral type estimates for a sample of over 200 000 objects are made using spectral type-colour relations, and over 9600 dwarfs (J 0.2 mag flaring event from an M4V star in our sample.Peer reviewe

Periodic variability of spotted M dwarfs in WTS

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.We present an analysis of the photometric variability of M dwarfs in the WFCAM Transit Survey, selected from spectral types inferred by their WTS and SDSS colours, with periods detected using a Lomb-Scargle Periodogram Analisys. We estimate population membership of these objects from their tangential velocities and photometric parralaxes. Examples of M dwarfs with variable light curve morphologuies are found. We discuss possible causes for this and make use of models of spotted stars in our interpretation of the results