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The ultraviolet (UV) emission from the most numerous stars in the universe, M dwarfs, impacts the formation, chemistry, atmospheric stability, and surface habitability of their planets. We have analyzed the spectral evolution of UV emission…
The prospects for the habitability of M-dwarf planets have long been debated, due to key differences between the unique stellar and planetary environments around these low-mass stars, as compared to hotter, more luminous Sun-like stars.…
Asteroseismological determinations of stellar ages have shown that old main-sequence dwarfs do not obey gyrochronology. Their rotation is slow compared to young stars but faster than gyrochronology predicts. This can be explained by the…
We present results from the volume-complete spectroscopic survey of 0.1-0.3M$_\odot$ M dwarfs within 15pc. This work discusses the active sample without close binary companions, providing a comprehensive picture of these 123 stars with…
One of the characteristic features of low-mass stars is their propensity to shed large amounts of angular momentum throughout their evolution. This distinguishs them from brown dwarfs which remain fast rotators over timescales of gigayears.…
A knowledge of stellar ages is crucial for our understanding of many astrophysical phenomena, and yet ages can be difficult to determine. As they become older, stars lose mass and angular momentum, resulting in an observed slowdown in…
Kepler ultra-high precision photometry of long and continuous observations provides a unique dataset in which surface rotation and variability can be studied for thousands of stars. Because many of these old field stars also have…
Only a few well characterized very low-mass M dwarfs are known today. Our understanding of M dwarfs is vital as these are the most common stars in our solar neighborhood. We aim to characterize the properties of a rare F+dM stellar system…
(Abridged) Understanding stellar activity in M dwarfs is crucial for the physics of stellar atmospheres as well as for ongoing radial velocity exoplanet programmes. Despite the increasing interest in M dwarfs, our knowledge of the…
We present a study of close white dwarf and M dwarf (WD+dM) binary systems and examine the effect that a close companion has on the magnetic field generation in M dwarfs. We use a base sample of 1602 white dwarf -- main sequence binaries…
Stable, hydrogen-burning, M dwarf stars comprise about 75% of all stars in the Galaxy. They are extremely long-lived and because they are much smaller in mass than the Sun (between 0.5 and 0.08 MSun), their temperature and stellar…
Main sequence turn-off (MSTO) stars are good tracers of Galactic populations since their ages can be reliably estimated from atmospheric parameters. Based on the GALAH survey, we use the Yale Rotation Evolution Code to determine ages of…
Many magnetic white dwarfs exhibit a polarised spectrum that periodically varies as the star rotates because the magnetic field is not symmetric about the rotation axis. In this work, we report the discovery that while weakly magnetic white…
Stellar ages are extremely difficult to determine and often subject to large uncertainties, especially for field low-mass stars. We plan to carry out a calibration of the decrease in high-energy emissions of low-mass GKM stars with time,…
We investigate how the evolution of the stellar spin rate affects, and is affected by, planets in close orbits, via star-planet tidal interactions. To do this, we used a standard equilibrium tidal model to compute the orbital evolution of…
Even with the diminished precision possible with only two reaction wheels, the Kepler spacecraft can obtain mmag level, time-resolved photometry of tens of thousands of sources. The presence of such a rich, large data set could be…
Rotation is a key parameter in the evolution of stars. From 1 Myr (the age of the ONC) to 4.5 Gyr (the age of the Sun), solar-like stars lose about 1-2 orders of specific angular momentum. The main agents for this rotational braking are…
Juvenile ultracool dwarfs are late spectral type objects (later than ~M6) with ages between 10 Myr and several 100 Myr. Their age-related properties lie intermediate between very low mass objects in nearby star-forming regions (ages 1-5…
Age is an important characteristic of a planetary system, but also one that is difficult to determine. Assuming that the host star and the planets are formed at the same time, the challenge is to determine the stellar age. Asteroseismology…
Studying exoplanets with their parent stars is crucial to understand their population, formation and history. We review some of the key questions regarding their evolution with particular emphasis on giant gaseous exoplanets orbiting close…