Meeting the cool neighbors. VIII. A preliminary 20 parsec census from the NLTT catalogue

Continuing our census of late-type dwarfs in the solar neighborhood, we present BVRI photometry and optical spectroscopy of 800 mid-type M dwarfs drawn from the NLTT proper-motion catalog. The targets are taken both from our own cross-referencing of the NLTT Catalogue and the 2MASS Second Incremental Data Release, and from the revised NLTT compiled recently by Salim & Gould. All are identified as nearby-star candidates based on their location in the (m r, m r-K s) diagram. Three hundred stars discussed here have previous astrometric, photometric, or spectroscopic observations. We present new BVRI photometry for 101 stars, together with low-resolution spectroscopy of a further 400 dwarfs. In total, we find that 241 stars are within 20 pc of the Sun, while a further 70 lie within 1 σ of our distance limit. Combining the present results with previous analyses, we have quantitative observations for 1910 of the 1913 candidates in our NLTT nearby-star samples. Eight hundred fifteen of those stars have distance estimates of 20 pc or less, including 312 additions to the local census. With our NLTT follow-up observations essentially complete, we have searched the literature for K and early-type M dwarfs within the sampling volume covered by the 2MASS second release. Comparing the resultant 20 pc census against predicted numbers, derived from the 8 pc luminosity function, shows an overall deficit of ∼20% for stellar systems and ∼35% for individual stars. Almost all are likely to be fainter than M J = 7, and at least half are probably as yet undiscovered companions of known nearby stars. Our results suggest that there are relatively few missing systems at the lowest luminosities, M J > 8.5. We discuss possible means of identifying the missing stars.