Secular Acceleration of Barnard's Star

Details Secular Acceleration of Barnard's Star Secular Acceleration of Barnard's Star

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21340613b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #406.13; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.200

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Scientific paper

Barnard's Star should have significant secular acceleration because it lies close to the Sun and has the highest known proper motion along with a large radial velocity. It will pass within about 1.4 pc in another 9,750 years. Secular changes in proper motion and radial velocity are essentially the Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations, respectively, arising from use of a rotating coordinate system defined by the Sun-star radius vector. Although stellar space velocities measured with respect to the Sun are essentially constant, these perspective effects arise with changing distance and viewing angle.
Hipparcos-2 plus Nidever et al. (2002) predict a perspective change in the proper motion of 1.285±0.006 mas yr-2 for Barnard's Star. Recent analysis of 900+ photographic plates between 1968 and 1998 with the 26.25-in (0.67-m) McCormick refractor detected a secular acceleration of 1.25±0.04 mas yr-2, which agrees with the predicted value within the measurement errors. Earlier, Benedict et al. (1999) measured its secular acceleration to be 1.2±0.2 mas yr-2 using 3 years of HST FGS observations.
Similarly, a perspective change in radial velocity of 4.50±0.01 m s-1 yr-1 can be predicted for Barnard's Star. Kürster et al. (2003) detected variations in their observations of it that are largely attributable to secular acceleration along the line of sight with some contribution from stellar activity.
Although secular acceleration effects have been limited for past studies of stellar motions, they can be significant for observations extending over decades or for high-precision measurements required to detect extrasolar planets. Future studies will need to consider this factor for the nearest stars and for those with large proper motions or radial velocities.
NSF grant AST 98-20711; Litton Marine Systems; Peninsula Community Foundation Levinson Fund; UVa Governor's Fellowship, Dean's F&A Fellowship, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; and, US Naval Observatory supported this research.

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