AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 6. Binary Stars
Display, Monday, January 7, 2002, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall

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[6.02] The RECONS Hunt for Intriguing Binaries in the Solar Neighborhood

J.L. Bean (Georgia Institute of Technology), T.J. Henry, W.C. Jao, J.P. Subasavage (Georgia State University)

As part of an effort to characterize the Sun's neighbors, photometric research was carried out on two samples of low-mass stars known or suspected to lie within 25 parsecs of the Sun. Quality filtered optical photometric data (UBVRI) from published research were merged with recently released infrared data (JHK) from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) to create comprehensive long baseline V-I or V-K colors for more than 1400 stars. These were then combined with parallaxes from the NStars Database to create color-absolute magnitude diagrams.

The results of this research include increasing the breadth of the NStars Database by adding photometric data for over 1400 stars, and identifying intriguing multiple systems (close spectroscopic binaries, BY Dra types, RS CVn systems) as well as white dwarfs and evolved stars in the solar neighborhood. More than two dozen objects have been identified as probable new multiple systems from their positions above the main sequence. Additional investigations for these intriguing systems are planned, including observations made with the GSU CHARA Array to resolve very close binary systems.

This research is a continuation of the work done by RECONS (Research Consortium on Nearby Stars) based at Georgia Sate U., Johns Hopkins U., and U. Virginia, and NASA's Nearby Stars Project (NStars).


If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.chara.gsu.edu/RECONS/. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.

The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: gte327j@prism.gatech.edu

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