Keywords :
Galaxy stellar content - stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs - stars: luminosity function, mass function
Abstract:Using data from the 2 Micron All Sky Survey All-Sky Point Source Catalogue, we have extended our census of nearby ultracool dwarfs to cover the full celestial sphere above Galactic latitude of 15{deg}. Starting with an initial catalog of 2139484 sources, we have winnowed the sample to 467 candidate late-type M or L dwarfs within 20pc of the Sun. Fifty-four of those sources already have spectroscopic observations confirming them as late-type dwarfs. We present optical spectroscopy of 376 of the remaining 413 sources, and identify 44 as ultracool dwarfs with spectroscopic distances less than 20pc. Twenty-five of the 37 sources that lack optical data have near-infrared spectroscopy. Combining the present sample with our
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