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Astronomers Obtain Largest Binary Stars Catalog with Plentiful Parameters

Nov 18, 2019

Binary stars, the primary form of stars, are the fundamental bricks for astrophysics by providing model-free stellar parameters and contributing countless interesting astronomical phenomena. Although more than 100,000 binaries have been found by astronomers, a few of them have plentiful parameters and come from very inconsistent sources. As a result, the overall characteristics of the binary stars remain unclear.

Recently, in a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, astronomers from Yunnan Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered the largest binary stars catalog with plentiful parameters from a uniform source. This catalog contains 12 parameters for 1320 binary stars, and all of them are discovered based on Kepler database and followed by Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopy Telescope (LAMOST) spectral observation.

"Because of the plentiful parameters and the case of single source, the correction on selection bias is feasible. This is the key of the door towards the real distribution of binary stars,” said Dr. ZHANG Jia, the lead author of the study.

The period distribution of binary stars is very useful for simulation on massive binaries stars, which is the basic initial condition for computing the statistical features on a large group of binaries. The astronomers obtained a new period distribution which is quite different from previous studies. The results at least suggested that the understanding on binaries is far from complete.

Along with many known phenomena on binary stars that were reproduced, some new interesting ones were discovered. The orbital eccentricity distribution for detached binaries, for instance, showed unexpected results. The distribution rises up suddenly when eccentricity is very close to unity, which is an incredible phenomenon which deserves further study.

 

The period distribution of binary stars (Image by ZHANG Jia) 

Contact

ZHANG Jia

Yunnan observatories

E-mail:

Unbiased Distribution of Binary Parameters from LAMOST and Kepler Observations

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