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An All-Sky Catalog of Bright M Dwarfs

We present an all-sky catalog of M dwarf stars with apparent infrared magnitude J<10. The 8,889 stars are selected from the ongoing SUPERBLINK survey of stars with proper motion >40 mas/yr, supplemented on the bright end with the TYCHO-2 catalog. Completeness tests which account for kinematic (proper motion) bias suggest that our catalog represents ~75% of the estimated ~11,900 M dwarfs with J<10 expected to populate the entire sky. Our catalog is, however, significantly more complete for the Northern sky (~90%) than it is for the South (~60%). Stars are identified as cool, red M dwarfs from a combination of optical and infrared color cuts, and are distinguished from background M giants and highly-reddened stars using either existing parallax measurements or, if such measurements are lacking, on their location in an optical-to-infrared reduced proper motion diagram. These bright M dwarfs are all prime targets for exoplanet surveys using the Doppler radial velocity or transit methods; the combination of low-mass and bright apparent magnitude should make possible the detection of Earth-size planets on short-period orbits using currently available techniques. Parallax measurements, when available, and photometric distance estimates are provided for all stars, and these place most systems within 60 parsecs of the Sun. Spectral type estimated from V-J color shows that most of the stars range from K7 to M4, with only a few late M dwarfs, all within 20 pc. Proximity to the Sun also makes these stars good targets for high-resolution exoplanet imaging searches, especially if younger objects can be identified on the basis of X-ray or UV excess. For that purpose, we include X-ray flux from ROSAT and FUV/NUV ultraviolet magnitudes from GALEX for all stars for which a counterpart can be identified in those catalogs.