The solar neighborhood.: XIV.: Parallaxes from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory Parallax Investigation -: First results from the 1.5 m telescope program

Trigonometric parallaxes, proper motions, and V-J (RI)(KC) photometry are presented for 31 stars targeted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory Parallax Investigation (CTIOPI), a program of wide scope aimed at discovering and characterizing nearby stars. The data given are the first that have been obtained with the CTIO 1.5 m telescope, targeting a fainter subset of the CTIOPI input list. We present the first trigonometric parallaxes for 21 systems, of which one is within 10 pc (LP 647-013 at 9.59 +/- 0.22 pc) and six are between 10 and 25 pc. Concurrently with our Cerro Tololo 0.9 m program, we have determined parallaxes for DEN 1048 - 3956 and LTT 6933 that place them at 4.00 +/- 0.03 and 16.24 +/- 0.43 pc from the Sun, respectively. We also present an improved parallax for the important nearby triple system GJ 2005ABC, placing it at 7.72 +/- 0.15 pc from the Sun. The remaining seven parallaxes are for calibration stars, whose values indicate that our results agree well with other parallax determinations. We present color-magnitude and color-color diagrams that, in combination with theoretical isochrones from the literature and other derived properties of the observed sample, have aided the identification of the general nature of each of our targets. We have in this way discovered five new subdwarfs and several very low mass stars, a few of which may be brown dwarfs.