Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Nov 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998larm.confe..21a&link_type=abstract
"IX Latin American Regional IAU Meeting, "Focal Points in Latin American Astronomy", held in Tonantzintla, Mexico, Nov 9-13, 199
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The properties of old disk and halo binaries are of interest for the understanding of the processes of formation and early dynamical evolution of the Galaxy. The luminosity function of the components of wide binaries and multiples, their mass function, the fraction of halo or old disk stars that are members of wide binaries, and the distribution of their separations are some of the basic properties that are poorly understood, mainly because of the paucity of known wide binaries among halo and old disk stars. The present work is an attempt to ameliorate this situation. We have elaborated a list of 133 wide binaries mostly belonging to the halo or high-velocity disk, by searching for common proper motion companions to the high-velocity and metal-poor stars studied by Schuster and collaborators (1988, 1993). Based on Stromgren photometry, these authors have derived distances, metallicities and ages for their stars. Since each star has a large and well determined proper motion, it was possible to compare this value with that of NLTT stars of its vicinity. In this way we were able to identify over 100 high-velocity and metal-poor common proper motion binary systems. Each system was carefully checked to avoid misidentifications; in most of the cases, distances were improved using the Hipparcos trigonometric parallaxes. We have determined the distribution of angular separations for our wide binaries. Reliable distances are available for all of our systems, so this distribution can be converted into a separation distribution in AU. We find 11 systems that have projected semiaxes in excess of 10000 AU, or 16 systems with expected semiaxes larger than 10000 AU, their existence poses interesting dynamical problems. Since many systems also have known radial velocities, space velocities for them can be determined, and galactic orbits have been computed and characterized. The secondaries of these wide binaries are interesting by themselves, since they represent a sampling of the faint end of the main sequence of old disk and halo stars.
Allen Christine
Herrera Miguel Angel
Poveda Arcadio
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