New Light on Dark Stars

There has been very considerable progress in research into low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets during the past few years, particularly since the fist edtion of this book was published in 2000. In this new edtion the authors present a comprehensive review of both the astrophysical nature of individual red dwarf and brown dwarf stars and their collective statistical properties as an important Galactic stellar population. Chapters dealing with the observational properies of low-mass dwarfs, the stellar mass function and extrasolar planets have been completely revised. Other chapters have been significantly revised and updated as appropriate, including important new material on observational techniques, stellar acivity, the Galactic halo and field star surveys. The authors detail the many discoveries of new brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets made since publication of the first edition of the book and provide a state-of-the-art review of our current knowledge of very low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets, including both the latest observational results and theoretical work. TOC:Astronomical Concepts.- Observational Properties of Low-Mass Dwarfs.- Structure, Formation and Evolution of Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs.- The Photosphere.- Stellar Activity.- A Galactic Structure Primer.- The Stellar Luminosity Function.- Brown Dwarfs.- The Mass Function.- M Dwarfs in the Galactic Halo.- Extrasolar Planets.