Kinematics of Hipparcos Visual Binaries. I. Stars with Orbital Solutions
Abstract
A sample consisting of 570 binary systems is compiled from several sources of visual binary stars with well-known orbital elements. High-precision trigonometric parallaxes (mean relative error about 5%) and proper motions (mean relative error about 3%) are extracted from the Hipparcos Catalogue or from the reprocessed Hipparcos data. However, 13% of the sample stars lack radial velocity measurements. Computed galactic velocity components and other kinematic parameters are used to divide the sample stars into kinematic age groups. The majority (89%) of the sample stars, with known radial velocities, are the thin disk stars, 9.5% binaries have thick disk kinematics and only 1.4% are halo stars. 85% of thin disk binaries are young or medium age stars and almost 15% are old thin disk stars. There is an urgent need to increase the number of the identified halo binary stars with known orbits and substantially improve the situation with their radial velocity data.
- Publication:
-
Baltic Astronomy
- Pub Date:
- 2001
- DOI:
- 10.1515/astro-2001-0402
- Bibcode:
- 2001BaltA..10..481B
- Keywords:
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- STARS: BINARIES: VISUAL;
- KINEMATICS;
- GALAXY: POPULATION;
- ORBITING OBSERVATORIES: HIPPARCOS