Poster Abstracts

Name/Affiliation:  Radostin Kurtev (Valparaiso University, Chile)

Title:  The VVV proper motion survey 

Abstract:
We developed an automatic method to search the Vista Variables en Via Lactea (VVV) Cambridge Astronomical Unit (CASU) survey catalogs for proper motion (PM) objects. The method is VVV self consistent and is based on cross-matching photometric Ks-band CASU catalogs obtained for 4 different epochs, including the first and the last one. The candidates were visually inspected on VVV, 2MASS and SuperCOSMOS images for final confirmation. We have examined ~100% of the VVV area to a limiting magnitude of Ks=13.5 and have detected ~2000 objects with proper motion higher than 0.05 arcsec per year. Because of the extreme crowding the VVV area was never systematically searched until now. Our sample includes dozens of completely new high proper motion stars and common proper motion pairs, some common proper motion companions of previously known high proper motion stars, and the first spectroscopically confirmed VVV brown dwarf. During the visual inspection of SuperCOSMOS images we have also identified 3 white dwarf common proper motion companions of previously known high proper motion stars. In this work we also demonstrate that the VVV CASU catalog coordinates are very precise and are suitable for parallax determinations to distance of about 40-50 pc.