Parallaxes for 1507 nearby mid-to-late M dwarfs

We augmented our planetary search time series with lower cadence astrometric imaging and obtained two million images of approximately 1800 stars suspected to be mid-to-late M dwarfs. We fit an astrometric model to MEarth's images for 1507 stars and obtained trigonometric distance measurements to each star with an average precision of 5mas.

Our measurements, combined with the Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry, allowed us to obtain an absolute K_s_ magnitude for each star. In turn, this allows us to better estimate the stellar parameters than those obtained with photometric estimates alone and to better prioritize the targets chosen to monitor at high cadence for planetary transits. The MEarth sample is mostly complete out to a distance of 25pc for stars of type M5.5V and earlier, and mostly complete for later type stars out to 20pc.