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Calculating Escape Velocities on 75,000 Double Star Systems Using Gaia Data Release 2. By Tol Wassman, Zachary Haarz, Morgan Watts, Jake North, and Kalée Tock. Double Stars. Close together Confirm orbits & find mass Washington Double Star catalogue (WDS) tracks these stars
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Calculating Escape Velocities on 75,000 Double Star Systems Using Gaia Data Release 2 By Tol Wassman, Zachary Haarz, Morgan Watts, Jake North, and Kalée Tock
Double Stars • Close together • Confirm orbits & find mass • Washington Double Star catalogue (WDS) tracks these stars • Gaia improves our ability to tell binaries from optical doubles
Binary Stars • Same distance from Earth: parallax (Plx) • Moving together in space: Proper Motion (PM), radial velocity (RV) • Relative motion less than escape velocity (vesc)
Richard Harshaw’s Data • Previous paper, also using Gaia data • Used parallax data, relative radial velocity, fit to R^2, and proper motion • Many stars did not have Gaia data • Created a spreadsheet with the scores
Matching WDS and Gaia • Query Gaia around WDS coordinates • Guess and check: • Magnitude within 2 • PA within 3o • Sep within 1’’ • Algorithm: • Closer to WDS, better • Also PM, Dist to precise search coordinates wherever possible • Ideally obtain PMs, RVs, Lum/Mag, and Plxs
Velocities • Escape velocity needs mass, which needs luminosity, sometimes needs mag and plx • R is pythagorean theorem with tangential and radial separation • Relative velocity needs speeds which need Plx, PM, and RV
Z factor • Z = Escape velocity/relative velocity • Z > 1.5 will be binary, Z < 0.5 will be optical • Simple range of 1.5 to 0.5 is nuanced range - looks best as Z - 0.5
Results • Harshaw sorts stars without parallax, Z-Factor ignores them • 68.5% optical doubles using Z-factor, and 16% using Harshaw’s method • Large difference in stars considered physical, considering omissions
Notes For Future Research • Small percent in between, binaries grow harsher over time? • Use orbital state vectors to determine theoretical orbits for binaries • Identify a more general stellar mass formula or refine the current one