Meeting the Cool Neighbours, II: Photometry of southern NLTT stars

Abstract

We present BVRI photometry of 180 bright, southern nearby-star candidates. The stars were selected from the New Luyten Two-Tenths proper motion catalogue based on optical/infrared colours, constructed by combining Luytens's m(r) estimates with near-infrared photometry from the 2-Micron All Sky Survey. Photometric parallaxes derived from (V-K), (V-I) and (I-J) colours, combined with the limited available astrometry, show that as many as 108 stars may lie within 20 parsecs of the Sun. Of these, 53 are new to nearby star catalogues, including three within 10 parsecs of the Sun.