36th Annual Student Research Conference
Characterizing Washington Double Star Catalog Entries With Gaia DR3
Daphne J. Zakarian
Dr. Stephen Williams (US Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station) and Dr. Vayujeet Gokhale, Faculty Mentors
The Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) contains over 150,000 entries of double and multiple-star systems from observations taken over the past 200 years. However, the WDS does not contain enough information to determine whether each of those systems is a gravitationally associated system or simply a pair of stars that happen to appear close together in the line-of-sight of the observer. The Gaia mission’s precise astrometric measurements provide sufficient information to determine whether a WDS entry refers to a visual star system or a gravitationally bound system. By searching for common parallax and proper motion pairs among all objects found by Gaia within a 5 arcsec radius from the WDS component coordinates, we find 56,819 likely gravitationally associated pairs, 5,767 possibly associated pairs, and 95,380 likely unassociated pairs.
Keywords: Catalogs, Astrometry, Double Stars, Binary Stars, Washington Double Star Catalog, Gaia Mission
Topic(s):Astronomy
Physics
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Session: 310-3
Location: MG 1096
Time: 1:45