J/AJ/168/190ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/168/190doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.51680190CDSTokovinin A.2025-08-11T20:12:55Z2025-06-16T08:26:54ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frmultiple-starsorbitsinterferometryvisible-astronomyKnowledge of the orbits of visual binary stars has always been one of the fundamentals of astronomy. Based historically on the visual measures, nowadays the orbits rely more (or exclusively) on the accurate speckle data. This prompts reconsideration of the methods of orbit calculation, undertaken here and illustrated by 20 examples, from accurate to drastically revised and tentative orbits. Good understanding and critical assessment of the input data is a key requirement, especially concerning visual measures. Combination of visual and speckle data is still needed for long-period binaries, but the relative weights must match their respective errors. When the orbit can be fully constrained only by accurate speckle data, the old measures should be ignored. Orbits can be classified into three grades: (A) fully constrained, (B) semiconstrained, and (C) preliminary or tentative. Typical use cases of visual orbits are listed. Accurate parallaxes from Gaia, together with the orbits, will greatly expand the data on stellar masses. Continued speckle monitoring will be an essential complement to Gaia, but the vast amount of new pairs will restrict future work on orbits to the most interesting or relevant objects.2024AJ....168..190Thttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/168/190CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicerelated-toB/wds : The Washington Visual Double Star Catalog (Mason+ 2001-2020)I/350 : Gaia EDR3 (Gaia Collaboration, 2020)J/AJ/106/352 : Speckle observations of binary stars VIII (Hartkopf+ 1993)J/AJ/111/936 : ICCD Speckle obs. of binary stars. XIII (Hartkopf+ 1996)J/ApJS/190/1 : A survey of stellar families (Raghavan+, 2010)J/AJ/139/743 : Speckle interferometry in 2008-09 (Tokovinin+, 2010)J/AJ/144/56 : Speckle interferometry at SOAR in 2012 (Tokovinin+, 2012)J/AJ/150/151 : DSSI obs of binaries. VI. Measures in 2014 (Horch+, 2015)J/AJ/150/50 : Speckle interferometry at SOAR in 2014 (Tokovinin+, 2015)J/MNRAS/455/4136 : Kepler triples (Borkovits+, 2016)J/AJ/152/213 : Interferometry & sp.: sigma Orionis (Schaefer+, 2016)J/MNRAS/456/2070 : Eccentricity distribution: wide binaries (Tokovinin+, 2016)J/ApJ/844/103 : Orbit alignment in triple stars (Tokovinin, 2017)J/MNRAS/473/4497 : Binary stars astrom. & phot. measurements (Roberts+, 2018)J/ApJS/235/6 : Updated Multiple Star Cat. (MSC): Dec 2023 (Tokovinin, 2018)J/ApJ/871/63 : How to constrain M dwarf. II. Nearby binaries (Mann+, 2019)J/AJ/161/144 : Inner & outer orbits: 13 mult. stars syst. (Tokovinin, 2021)J/MNRAS/517/2925 : ORB6 binaries in Gaia EDR3 (Chulkov+, 2022)J/MNRAS/512/3383 : Wide binaries eccentricities with Gaia EDR3 (Hwang+, 2022)J/AJ/163/161 : Spectro. of Subsyst.: Mult. Stars. VIII. (Tokovinin, 2022)J/AJ/164/58 : Speckle Interferometry at SOAR in 2021 (Tokovinin+, 2022)J/ApJ/941/8 : RV measurements of Castor Aa and Ba (Torres+, 2022)J/AJ/163/178 : The Solar Neighborh. XLIV. M dwarfs: SOAR (Vrijmoet+, 2022)J/A+A/674/A25 : Gaia DR3. spurious signals (Holl+, 2023)J/AJ/166/139 : 2022 SOAR speckle interferometry:double stars (Mason+, 2023)J/AJ/165/160 : Subsystems orbits in multiple stars. IX (Tokovinin, 2023)J/AJ/168/28 : Speckle interferometry: SOAR 2023 (Tokovinin+, 2024)https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/168/190https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/168/190http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/168/190https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/168/190https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/168/190http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/AJ/168/190GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/AJ/168/190/table1 (Visual orbits)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/168/190/table1?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/168/190/table1?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/AJ/168/190/table1?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true0.605433110.77630720.0055555555555555566/14535 19649 22633 23017 23450 25862 26468 27040 29604 30874 31073 31450 31556 34256 42431 42763 42839 43423 44073 44358https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/AJ/168/190?format=asciiOpticaldefaultJ/AJ/168/190/table1Visual orbitsrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintWDSWDS codemeta.id;meta.maincharprimaryIDDiscoverer designationmeta.idcharPer[1.7/3200] Period, Pyrtime.perioddoublee_Per[0.01/2.8]? Uncertainty in Peryrstat.error;time.periodfloatnullableT[1913/2165] Time of periastron passageyrtime.epoch;src.orbital.periastrondoublee_T[0.04/0.75]? Uncertainty in Tyrstat.error;time.epoch;src.orbital.periastronfloatnullablee[0.17/0.97] Eccentricitysrc.orbital.eccentricityfloate_e[1e-3/1e-1]? Uncertainty in estat.error;src.orbital.eccentricityfloatnullablef_e[*] *: fixed value in orbit fitmeta.code;src.orbital.eccentricitychara[0.019/4.2] Semi-major axisarcsecphys.angSize.smajAxis;src.orbitalfloate_a[8e-4/2.8e-2]? Uncertainty in aarcsecstat.error;phys.angSize.smajAxisfloatnullableOmega[16/237] Position angle of ascending node {Omega}degsrc.orbital.node;pos.posAngfloate_Omega[0.04/697]? Uncertainty in {Omega}degstat.error;src.orbital.node;pos.posAngfloatnullableomega[8.6/326] Longitude of periastron from ascending node {omega}degsrc.orbital.periastronfloate_omega[0.35/675]? Uncertainty in {omega}degstat.error;src.orbital.periastronfloatnullablei[20/160] Orbital inclinationdegsrc.orbital.inclinationfloate_i[0.04/11]? Uncertainty in idegstat.error;src.orbital.inclinationfloatnullablef_i[*] *: fixed value in orbit fitmeta.code;src.orbital.inclinationcharGradeOrbit grade (1)meta.code.qual;src.orbitalcharRefPrevious orbit (2)meta.ref;src.orbitalcharNpNumber of position measurements (link to Table 2)meta.numberintnullable_RARight Ascension (J2000) from SIMBAD (not part of the original data)degpos.eq.ra;meta.main_DEDeclination (J2000) from SIMBAD (not part of the original data)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainSimbadNameSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.idcharnullableJ/AJ/168/190/table2Position measurements and residualsWDSWDS codemeta.id;meta.maincharrecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintDate[1847/2024.4] Date; Julian year (T)yrtime.epochdoublePA[0.0/360] Position angle ({Theta})degpos.posAngfloatSep[2e-3/1.8] Separation ({rho})arcsecpos.angDistance;src.orbitalfloate_Sep[2e-3/10] Uncertainty in Separation ({sigma}) (1)arcsecstat.error;pos.angDistance;src.orbitalfloat(O-C)PA[-147/267] Residual in PA (O-C_{Theta}_)degstat.fit.residual;pos.posAngfloat(O-C)Sep[-0.25/0.3] Residual in Sep (O-C_{rho}_)arcsecstat.fit.residual;pos.angDistancefloatMethMeasurement method (2)meta.code;obschar