Binary star
A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars are among the most important objects in astrophysics because they allow direct measurement of stellar masses and test theories of stellar evolution; they also serve as progenitors for phenomena such as novae, type Ia supernovae, and compact object mergers. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved as separate stars using a telescope, in which case they are called visual binaries. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy or astrometry. If a binary star happens to orbit in a plane along our line of sight, its components will eclipse and transit each other; these pairs are called eclipsing binaries, or, together with other binaries that change brightness as they orbit, photometric binaries.
If components in binary star systems are close enough, they can gravitationally distort each other's outer stellar atmospheres. In some cases, these close binary systems can exchange mass, which may bring their evolution to stages that single stars cannot attain. Examples of binaries are Sirius and Cygnus X-1. Binary stars are also common as the nuclei of many planetary nebulae, and are the progenitors of both novae and type Ia supernovae.
Discovery
s, a pair of stars that appear close to each other, have been observed since the invention of the telescope. Early examples include Mizar and Acrux. Mizar, in the Big Dipper, was observed to be double by Giovanni Battista Riccioli in 1650. The bright southern star Acrux, in the Southern Cross, was discovered to be double by Father Fontenay in 1685.Evidence that stars in pairs were more than just optical alignments came in 1767 when English natural philosopher and clergyman John Michell became the first person to apply the mathematics of statistics to the study of the stars, demonstrating in a paper that many more stars occur in pairs or groups than a perfectly random distribution and chance alignment could account for. He focused his investigation on the Pleiades cluster, and calculated that the likelihood of finding such a close grouping of stars was about one in half a million. He concluded that the stars in these double or multiple star systems might be drawn to one another by gravitational pull, thus providing the first evidence for the existence of binary stars and star clusters.
William Herschel began observing double stars in 1779, hoping to find a near star paired with a distant star so he could measure the near star's changing position as the Earth orbited the Sun, allowing him to calculate the distance to the near star. He would soon publish catalogs of about 700 double stars. By 1803, he had observed changes in the relative positions in a number of double stars over the course of 25 years, and concluded that, instead of showing parallax changes, they seemed to be orbiting each other in binary systems. The first orbit of a binary star was computed in 1827, when Félix Savary computed the orbit of Xi Ursae Majoris.
Over the years, many more double stars have been catalogued and measured. As of June 2017, the Washington Double Star Catalog, a database of visual double stars compiled by the United States Naval Observatory, contains over 100,000 pairs of double stars, including optical doubles as well as binary stars. Orbits are known for only a few thousand of these double stars.
Etymology
The term binary was first used in this context by Sir William Herschel in 1802, when he wrote:By the modern definition, the term binary star is generally restricted to pairs of stars which revolve around a common center of mass. Binary stars which can be resolved with a telescope or interferometric methods are known as visual binaries. For most of the known visual binary stars one whole revolution has not been observed yet; rather, they are observed to have travelled along a curved path or a partial arc.
The more general term double star is used for pairs of stars which are seen to be close together in the sky. This distinction is rarely made in languages other than English. Double stars may be binary systems or may be merely two stars that appear to be close together in the sky but have vastly different true distances from the Sun. The latter are termed optical doubles or optical pairs.
Classifications
Methods of observation
Binary stars are classified into four types according to the way in which they are observed: visually, by observation; spectroscopically, by periodic changes in spectral lines; photometrically, by changes in brightness caused by an eclipse; or astrometrically, by measuring a deviation in a star's position caused by an unseen companion. Any binary star can belong to several of these classes; for example, several spectroscopic binaries are also eclipsing binaries.Visual binaries
A visual binary star is a binary star for which the angular separation between the two components is great enough to permit them to be observed as a double star in a telescope, or even high-powered binoculars. The angular resolution of the telescope is an important factor in the detection of visual binaries, and as better angular resolutions are applied to binary star observations, an increasing number of visual binaries will be detected. The relative brightness of the two stars is also an important factor, as glare from a bright star may make it difficult to detect the presence of a fainter component.The brighter star of a visual binary is the primary star, and the dimmer is considered the secondary. In some publications, a faint secondary is called the comes. If the stars are the same brightness, the discoverer designation for the primary is customarily accepted.
The position angle of the secondary with respect to the primary is measured, together with the angular distance between the two stars. The time of observation is also recorded. After a sufficient number of observations are recorded over a period of time, they are plotted in polar coordinates with the primary star at the origin, and the most probable ellipse is drawn through these points such that the Keplerian law of areas is satisfied. This ellipse is known as the apparent ellipse, and is the projection of the actual elliptical orbit of the secondary with respect to the primary on the plane of the sky. From this projected ellipse the complete elements of the orbit may be computed, where the semi-major axis can only be expressed in angular units unless the stellar parallax, and hence the distance, of the system is known.
Spectroscopic binaries
Sometimes, the only evidence of a binary star comes from the Doppler effect on its emitted light. In these cases, the binary consists of a pair of stars where the spectral lines in the light emitted from each star first shifts towards the blue, when the star is moving towards us, and towards the red, when it is moving away from us, during its motion about their common center of mass, with the period of their common orbit.In these systems, the separation between the stars is usually very small, and the orbital velocity very high. Unless the plane of the orbit happens to be perpendicular to the line of sight, the orbital velocities have components in the line of sight, and the observed radial velocity of the system varies periodically. Since radial velocity can be measured with a spectrometer by observing the Doppler shift of the stars' spectral lines, the binaries detected in this manner are known as spectroscopic binaries. Most of these cannot be resolved as a visual binary, even with telescopes of the highest existing resolving power.
In some spectroscopic binaries, spectral lines from both stars are visible, and the lines are alternately double and single. Such a system is known as a double-lined spectroscopic binary. In other systems, the spectrum of only one of the stars is seen, and the lines in the spectrum shift periodically towards the blue, then towards red and back again. Such stars are known as single-lined spectroscopic binaries.
The orbit of a spectroscopic binary is determined by making a long series of observations of the radial velocity of one or both components of the system. The observations are plotted against time, and from the resulting curve a period is determined. If the orbit is circular, then the curve is a sine curve. If the orbit is elliptical, the shape of the curve depends on the eccentricity of the ellipse and the orientation of the major axis with reference to the line of sight.
It is impossible to determine individually the semi-major axis a and the inclination of the orbit plane i. However, the product of the semi-major axis and the sine of the inclination may be determined directly in linear units. If either a or i can be determined by other means, as in the case of eclipsing binaries, a complete solution for the orbit can be found.
Binary stars that are both visual and spectroscopic binaries are rare and are a valuable source of information when found. About 40 are known. Visual binary stars often have large true separations, with periods measured in decades to centuries; consequently, they usually have orbital speeds too small to be measured spectroscopically. Conversely, spectroscopic binary stars move fast in their orbits because they are close together, usually too close to be detected as visual binaries. Binaries that are found to be both visual and spectroscopic thus must be relatively close to Earth.
Eclipsing binaries
An eclipsing binary star is a binary star system in which the orbital plane of the two stars lies so nearly in the line of sight of the observer that the components undergo mutual eclipses. In the case where the binary is also a spectroscopic binary and the parallax of the system is known, the binary is quite valuable for stellar analysis. Algol, a triple star system in the constellation Perseus, contains the best-known example of an eclipsing binary.Eclipsing binaries are variable stars, not because the light of the individual components vary but because of the eclipses. The light curve of an eclipsing binary is characterized by periods of practically constant light, with periodic drops in intensity when one star passes in front of the other. The brightness may drop twice during the orbit, once when the secondary passes in front of the primary and once when the primary passes in front of the secondary. The deeper of the two eclipses is called the primary regardless of which star is being occulted, and if a shallow second eclipse also occurs it is called the secondary eclipse. The size of the brightness drops depends on the relative brightness of the two stars, the proportion of the occulted star that is hidden, and the surface brightness of the stars. Typically the occultation of the hotter star causes the primary eclipse.
An eclipsing binary's period of orbit may be determined from a study of its light curve, and the relative sizes of the individual stars can be determined in terms of the radius of the orbit, by observing how quickly the brightness changes as the disc of the nearest star slides over the disc of the other star. If it is also a spectroscopic binary, the orbital elements can also be determined, and the mass of the stars can be determined relatively easily, which means that the relative densities of the stars can be determined in this case.
Since about 1995, measurement of extragalactic eclipsing binaries' fundamental parameters has become possible with 8-meter class telescopes. This makes it feasible to use them to directly measure the distances to external galaxies, a process that is more accurate than using standard candles. By 2006, they had been used to give direct distance estimates to the LMC, SMC, Andromeda Galaxy, and Triangulum Galaxy. Eclipsing binaries offer a direct method to gauge the distance to galaxies to an improved 5% level of accuracy.