Red Dwarf Masses

Extract

When a project finds enough material from the brighter stars, without high demands on instruments and observing effort, so much the better. But the very red dwarf stars certainly are not in that category. To show how limited the knowledge still is: Assume optimistically that the star count to 5 pc is complete. Extend the distance merely to 7 or 8 pc, i.e., scan a 3 or 4 times larger volume, and the present count is already short by several dozens of stars—practically the entire dM5–M8 range.

At these objects—with very little luminosity in the visible range—the observationally accessed relationship between mass and luminosity ends, and the peak in the luminosity function need not mean a peak of the mass-frequency function.