Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 Observations of the Binary Fraction among Pre-Main-Sequence Cluster Stars in Orion

Details Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 Observations of the Binary Fraction among Pre-Main-Sequence Cluster Stars in Orion Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 Observations of the Binary Fraction among Pre-Main-Sequence Cluster Stars in Orion

Mar 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997apj...477..705p&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal v.477, p.705

Statistics

69

Stars: Binaries: Visual, Ism: Individual Name: Orion Nebula, Galaxy: Open Clusters And Associations: General, Stars: Pre-Main-Sequence, Stars: Statistics

Scientific paper

We present estimates of the binary frequency for optically visible (IHST < 19 mag) members of the dense (mean star separation ~0.05 pc) embedded stellar clusters associated with NGC 2024, NGC 2068, and NGC 2071 (distance = 460 pc) based on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) observations. Of 99 targets, 15 are found to be double stars with projected linear separations of 138--1050 AU (0."3 < theta < 2."3). The resulting multiplicity fraction is 15/99 or 0.15 +/- 0.04 in this separation range, while the comparable values observed for solar neighborhood G and K stars are 0.11 and 0.09, respectively. We also examined the archival F547M WFPC2 images of the Trapezium cluster obtained by O'Dell & Wen and found a binary frequency of 7/50 or 0.14 +/- 0.05 in the separation range 138--828 AU for stars with VHST < 17. Our results compare well with the value of 0.16 +/- 0.03 determined recently by Reipurth & Zinnecker from observations of 238 pre--main-sequence (PMS) stars in nearby (d ~ 150 pc) low-density (mean star separation ~0.3 pc) star-forming regions over comparable separation ranges. Our results suggest an excess of PMS binaries over main-sequence binaries with the same separations. In addition, we find no evidence that the fraction of binaries formed in relatively dense clusters differs from that characterizing low-density star-forming regions.

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