Mean Colors and Effective Temperatures of K and M Dwarfs

Abstract

Many applications of multicolor wideband photometry depend upon the existence of a table of mean colors, i.e. a listing of the average values of the color indices B–V, V–R, etc. for each spectral type. Such a table relates the observed colors of unreddened stars to their temperature classes and enables one to draw a reference line representing the main sequence on any color-color diagram.