2,201 research outputs found

    Dynamical Masses of Low Mass Stars in the Taurus and Ophiuchus Star Forming Regions

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    We report new dynamical masses for 5 pre-main sequence (PMS) stars in the L1495 region of the Taurus star-forming region (SFR) and 6 in the L1688 region of the Ophiuchus SFR. Since these regions have VLBA parallaxes these are absolute measurements of the stars' masses and are independent of their effective temperatures and luminosities. Seven of the stars have masses <0.6<0.6 solar masses, thus providing data in a mass range with little data, and of these, 6 are measured to precision <5%< 5 \%. We find 8 stars with masses in the range 0.09 to 1.1 solar mass that agree well with the current generation of PMS evolutionary models. The ages of the stars we measured in the Taurus SFR are in the range 1-3 MY, and <1<1 MY for those in L1688. We also measured the dynamical masses of 14 stars in the ALMA archival data for Akeson~\&~Jensen's Cycle 0 project on binaries in the Taurus SFR. We find that the masses of 7 of the targets are so large that they cannot be reconciled with reported values of their luminosity and effective temperature. We suggest that these targets are themselves binaries or triples.Comment: 20 page

    Dynamical Masses of Young Stars in Multiple Systems

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    We present recent measurements of the orbital motion in the young binaries DF Tau and ZZ Tau, and the hierarchical triple Elias 12, that were obtained with the Fine Guidance Sensors on the HST and at the Keck Observatory using adaptive optics. Combining these observations with previous measurements from the literature, we compute preliminary orbital parameters for DF Tau and ZZ Tau. We find that the orbital elements cannot yet be determined precisely because the orbital coverage spans only about 90 degr in position angle. Nonetheless, the range of possible values for the period and semi-major axis already defines a useful estimate for the total mass in DF Tau and ZZ Tau, with values of 0.90{+0.85}{-0.35} M_sun and 0.81{+0.44}{-0.25} M_sun, respectively, at a fiducial distance of 140 pc.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A

    Preliminary Orbit of the Young Binary Haro 1-14c

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    Using the Keck Interferometer, we spatially resolved the orbit of the pre-main sequence binary, Haro 1-14c, for the first time. We present these interferometric observations along with additional spectroscopic radial velocity measurements of the components. We performed a simultaneous orbit fit to the interferometric visibilities and the radial velocities of Haro 1-14c. Based on a statistical analysis of the possible orbital solutions that fit the data, we determined component masses of M_1 = 0.96 (+0.27/-0.08) Msun and M_2 = 0.33 (+0.09/-0.02) Msun for the primary and secondary, respectively, and a distance to the system of 111 (+19/-18) pc. The distance measurement is consistent with the close distance estimates of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud. Comparing our results with evolutionary tracks suggests an age of 3-4 Myr for Haro 1-14c. With additional interferometric measurements to improve the uncertainties in the masses and distance, we expect the low-mass secondary to provide important empirical data for calibrating the theoretical evolutionary tracks for pre-main sequence stars.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A
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