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New Tricks with the Joker: Using the Infrared to Reveal Hidden Binary Stars

Presentation #553.01 in the session “Hidden and Active Binaries”.

Published onJan 11, 2021
New Tricks with the Joker: Using the Infrared to Reveal Hidden Binary Stars

Fifty percent of stars in the night sky are actually binary star systems, but finding and characterizing them are difficult. Most surveys of binary stars are conducted in the visible spectrum, limiting the ability to detect lines from the fainter companion star. We will combine high-quality optical radial velocity data from the WIYN Open Cluster Study (WOCS) with high-quality infrared radial velocity data from the SDSS/APOGEE survey. The APOGEE survey can allow us to detect the low-mass secondary components for the first time in some of these binary systems. We analyze binary stars in three open clusters, NGC 188, NGC 6819, NGC 7789. The combined RV data set is analyzed using The Joker, a new Monte Carlo analysis technique, that will allow us to characterize these stars better than each study alone, and allow a better characterization of binary populations in these fundamental open clusters.

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