Speaker
Description
Low-mass stars and brown dwarfs (M, L, and T types) dominate the stellar population of the Milky Way and are key to understanding Galactic structure and evolution. Their optical faintness and location in highly extincted regions limit current astrometric surveys. Gaia has revolutionized our view of nearby low-mass stars through precise astrometry and photometry, but its sensitivity decreases sharply for the coolest and reddest objects. Infrared surveys such as VVV and VVVX have extended detections into highly extincted regions, though their astrometric precision is lower than that of Gaia. GaiaNIR will overcome these limitations by extending high-precision astrometry into the near-infrared, enabling a complete census of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, improved kinematics in dusty regions, and refined constraints on the low-mass end of the initial mass function. Tackling NIR calibration, cross-wavelength consistency, and multi-epoch integration will be crucial to fully exploit GaiaNIR and achieve a complete view of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs.
