Initial Scientific Results from Phase-Referenced Astrometry of Sub-Arcsecond Binaries

Abstract

The Palomar Testbed Interferometer has observed several binary star systems whose separations fall between the interferometric coherence length (a few hundredths of an arcsecond) and the typical atmospheric seeing limit of one arcsecond. Using phase-referencing techniques we measure the relative separations of the systems to precisions of a few tens of micro-arcseconds. We present the first scientific results of these observations, including the astrometric detection of the faint third stellar component of the kappa Pegasi system.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. To appear in SPIE conference proceedings volume 5491, "New Frontiers in Stellar Interferometery