AN INFRARED HIGH PROPER MOTION SURVEY USING THE 2MASS AND SDSS: DISCOVERY OF M, L, AND T DWARFS

A search of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) reveals 36 previously unknown high proper motion objects with J < 17 mag. Their red optical colors indicate that 27 are M dwarfs, eight are early-type L dwarfs, and one is a late-type T dwarf. The L dwarfs have J - K-s colors near the extrema of known L dwarfs, indicating that previous surveys for L dwarfs using color as a selection criterion may be biased. Follow-up near-infrared spectroscopy of six dwarfs confirm that they are all late-type with spectral types ranging from M8 to T4. Spectroscopy also shows that some of the L dwarf spectra exhibit peculiar features similar to other peculiar "blue" L dwarfs, which may indicate that these dwarfs have a relatively condensate free atmosphere or may be metal poor. Photometric distance estimates indicate that 22 of the new M, L, and T dwarfs lie within 100 pc of the Sun with the newly discovered T dwarf, 2MASS J10595185+3042059, located at similar to 25 pc. Based on the colors and proper motions of the newly identified objects, several appear to be good subdwarf candidates. The proper motions of known ultracool dwarfs detected in our survey were also measured, including, for the first time, SDSS J085834.42+325627.6 (T1), SDSS J125011.65+392553.9 (T4), and 2MASS J15261405+2043414 (L7).