Welcome to my website! My name is Serge Dieterich. I am an observational astronomer who studies the smallest types of stars stars in our galaxy and also their even smaller cousins, the sub-stellar objects known as brown dwarfs. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. I am also a member of the inter-institutional Research Consortium on Nearby Stars, RECONS.
Stars exist in a huge variety of sizes and masses, down from about only 7 percent the mass of our Sun up to more than 100 times the mass of our Sun. However it turns out that the vast majority of stars are very small as far as stars go, with masses less than half the mass of our Sun. These stars are known as red dwarfs, or the so called "spectral type M" stars. Some of these stars are truly tiny for stellar standards, no larger than the planet Jupiter! They are also incredibly faint. If a small M dwarf and our Sun were placed side by side the M dwarf would shine with less than 1% the light of our Sun.
Please take a few minutes to explore my website and find out more about me, my research, and our smallest and closest stellar companions.
Sky and Telescope - Meet the Neighbors - January 2019, behind paywall.
Sky and Telescope - New Cutoff for Star Sizes
Sky and Telescope - The Mystery of the Missing Brown Dwarfs
Scientific American - A Star at the Edge of Eternity
Popular Science - Being a heavyweight isn't enough to turn a brown dwarf into a star
NASA - Brown Dwarfs Don't Hang Out With Stars
Sci News - Astronomers Say Star-Brown Dwarf Boundary May Soon Be Clearer