AN EMPIRICAL UBV RI JHK COLOR-TEMPERATURE CALIBRATION FOR STARS

A collection of Johnson/Cousins photometry for stars with known [Fe/H] is used to generate color-color relations that include the abundance dependence. Literature temperature and bolometric correction ( BC) dependences are attached to the color relations. The JHK colors are transformed to the Bessell & Brett homogenized system. The main result of this work is the tabulation of seven colors and the V-band BC as a function of T-eff, log g, and [Fe/H] for -1.06 < V - K < 10.2 and an accompanying interpolation program. Improvements to the present calibration would involve filling photometry gaps, obtaining more accurate and on-system photometry, knowing better log g and [Fe/H] values, improving the statistics for data-impoverished groups of stars such as metal-poor K dwarfs, applying small tweaks in the processing pipeline, and obtaining better empirical temperature and BC relations, especially for supergiants and M stars. A way to estimate dust extinction from M dwarf colors is pointed out.