The American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego yielded
results we’ll be discussing all year. One study that comes
immediately to mind (with a paper scheduled for the Astronomical
Journal in April) is the work of Wei-Chun Jao and the Research
Consortium on Nearby Stars (RECONS) team at Georgia State
University, who have measured the distance to four stars — all
of them red dwarfs — within 33 light years of the Sun. All told,
the team has found 26 new neighbors within 25 parsecs (82 light-
years), along with the first confirmed binaries comprising a red
subdwarf and a white dwarf. Subdwarfs are highly unusual stars,
with extremely low metallicity; i.e., few elements heavier than
hydrogen and helium. From a press release on the star
measurements: Another indicator that both systems are old is
that each travels through the Galaxy at nearly 150 km/sec
(roughly 100 miles/sec). Contrary to people, older stars like
the Jupiter-sized red subdwarfs generally move faster than their
younger counterparts that are s