Related papers: Spectroscopic triples and a chance alignment. A so…
Massive stars are predominantly found in binaries and higher order multiples. While the period and eccentricity distributions of OB stars are now well established across different metallicity regimes, the determination of mass-ratios has…
The assertion that there is an intrinsic excess of binaries with mass ratios q \simeq 1 - the twin hypothesis - is investigated. A strong version of this hypothesis (H_s), due to Lucy & Ricco (1979) and Tokovinin (2000), refers to a narrow…
We report about an ongoing photometric and spectroscopic monitoring survey of about 250 O- and 540 B-type stars in the southern Milky Way with the aim to determine the fraction of close binary systems as a function of mass and to determine…
High-precision radial-velocity techniques, which enabled the detection of extrasolar planets are now sensitive to relativistic effects in the data of spectroscopic binary stars (SBs). We show how these effects can be used to derive the…
We present orbital elements for twenty-two single-line binaries, nine of them studied for the first time, determined from a joint spectroscopic and astrometric solution. The astrometry is based on interferometric measurements obtained with…
Binary stars make up a significant portion of all stellar systems. Consequently, an understanding of the bulk properties of binary stars is necessary for a full picture of star formation. Binary surveys indicate that both multiplicity…
We present B and R band spectroastrometry of a sample of 45 Herbig Ae/Be stars in order to study their binary properties. All but one of the targets known to be binary systems with a separation of ~0.1-2.0 arcsec are detected by a…
Massive binary stars undergo qualitatively different evolution when the two components are similar in mass ('twins'), and the abundance of twin binaries is therefore important to understanding a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. We…
I present a brief summary of three different types of binary star - astrometric, spectroscopic and eclipsing - and tabulate the properties of these systems that can be determined directly from observations. Eclipsing binary stars are the…
O- and B-type stars are often found in binary systems, but the low binary mass-ratio regime is relatively unexplored due to observational difficulties. Binary systems with low mass-ratios may have formed through fragmentation of the…
The orbits of five single-lined spectroscopic binaries have recently been determined. We now use astrometric measurements that were collected with the Hipparcos satellite to constrain the systems' mass ratios and secondary masses. The…
For a successful detection of gravitational waves by LISA, it is essential to construct theoretical waveforms in a reliable manner. We discuss gravitational waves from an extreme mass ratio binary system which is expected to be a promising…
We present observations of a new low-mass double-lined eclipsing binary system discovered using repeat observations of the celestial equator from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey II. Using near-infrared photometry and optical spectroscopy we…
A technique is described for the detection and measurement of close binary systems whose images are unresolved. The method is based on analysis of the moment of inertia tensor of the image, from which the product of the binary flux ratio…
If not properly accounted for, unresolved binary stars can induce a bias in the photometric determination of star cluster masses inferred from star counts and the luminosity function. A correction factor close to 1.15 (for a binary fraction…
We report on a data-driven spectral model that we have developed for the identification of double-lined spectroscopic binary stars (SB2s) in the LAMOST low-resolution survey (R$\sim$1800). Employing simultaneous fitting with both…
Knowing the masses of the components of binary systems is very useful to constrain the possible scenarios that could lead to their existence. While it is sometimes possible to determine the mass of the primary star, for single-lined…
The masses of compact objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes are fundamental to astrophysics, but very difficult to measure. We present the results of an analysis of subluminous B (sdB) stars in close binary systems with…
In this paper we present a spectroscopic study of six double-lined binaries, five of which were recently discovered in a high-resolution spectroscopic survey of optical counterparts of stellar X-ray sources. Thanks to high-resolution…
Photometric observations and analysis of twelve previously poorly studied contact binary systems is presented. All show total eclipses and have extremely low mass ratios ranging from 0.072 to 0.15. Also, all show characteristics of orbital…