The 2,985 stars and brown dwarfs of the Kirkpatrick+ 2024 20-parsec sample, plotted in 3D Galactic coordinates. The sample is the published census, not a complete one - the same page's IMF fit implies roughly 3,000 stars and 790 brown dwarfs in this volume, so the L/T/Y tail is known to be incomplete. M dwarfs dominate the count, and it's among them that VarWISE hunts for new eclipsing binary candidates. Hover any star to see its details.
Every nearby star projected onto an Aitoff all-sky map in equatorial coordinates (Aitoff is neither equal-area nor conformal; the equal-area sibling is Hammer). VarWISE candidate eclipsers (gold ✦) are concentrated along the Galactic plane where variability surveys have deepest coverage.
Absolute G magnitude vs. Gaia BP − RP color for every 20 pc census object with a reliable parallax and photometry. The main sequence, white dwarf cooling track, and the brown dwarf plunge are all visible in one frame.
Distribution of adopted initial masses for every object in the 20 pc sample. The low-mass end dominates by number — more than half the population is less than half a solar mass.
Bars: observed mass distribution of the 20 pc census. Black line: the four-segment power law ξ(M) ∝ M−α fit by Kirkpatrick et al. (2024), with α = 2.3 / 1.3 / 0.25 / 0.6 in the four mass regimes shown. Dashed segments mark the breakpoints. Vertical gold line: the hydrogen-burning limit.
Dwarfs dominate. M dwarfs alone are a majority of cataloged objects.
Kirkpatrick Figure 14. Mass scales almost monotonically with spectral class — reading a spectrum is the same as weighing a star.
A uniform survey should grow as the volume of a sphere — the number of objects inside radius d should scale as d³. Deviations from that scaling reveal which classes are still missing from the sample at larger distances.
Count per 1 pc shell. Shell volume grows as 4πr²Δr, so a complete sample should trace a parabola.
N(<d) for each spectral class. The slope reveals the effective detection limit.