RI photometry of 2MASS late M and L dwarfs

II/246) JHKs and photographic red colors, made with a telescope of modest aperture. It is shown that deep surveys covering these red bands can provide data sets that complement JHKs, permitting a fairly good photometric classification system for L dwarfs.

Due primarily to the disappearance of strong TiO opacities, R-I reaches a maximum at late M type and turns blueward for subtypes M9 to about L3. Apart from a small plateau at L0-L2, the I-Ks color remains as a monotonic measure of spectral type or temperature over this range, and likewise for M dwarfs. For late L types, both colors probably get redder again, although the accuracy of our data and number of objects do not give us robust conclusions by L6-L8.