Orbits and Masses for 156 Companions from Combined Astrometry and Radial Velocities, and A Validation of Gaia Non-Single Star Solutions

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: An, Qier, Brandt, Timothy D., Brandt, G. Mirek, Venner, Alexander
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918122649288704
author An, Qier
Brandt, Timothy D.
Brandt, G. Mirek
Venner, Alexander
author_facet An, Qier
Brandt, Timothy D.
Brandt, G. Mirek
Venner, Alexander
contents We combine absolute astrometry from Hipparcos and Gaia with archival radial velocities from the Keck/HIRES and ESO/HARPS spectrographs, as well as relative astrometry (when available), to derive masses and orbits for 156 companions around main-sequence stars, including 111 stellar companions, 12 brown dwarfs, and 33 planets. Although this sample is not compiled for occurrence-rate statistics due to systematic biases in non-uniform target selection and varied observing strategies, we nonetheless clearly detect the Brown Dwarf desert in the distribution of companion masses (as well as in mass ratio), out to separations of more than 10 AU. This work also enables a validation of Gaia DR3 non-single-star solutions by predicting Gaia's measured Right Ascension and Declination acceleration terms. For stars with Gaia astrometric acceleration solutions, we find qualitative agreement with Gaia DR3 results. Our predicted accelerations agree with the Gaia DR3 values overall, showing a median offset of 1.85 sigma, with a tail extending to about 10 sigma. These residuals suggest modestly underestimated uncertainties, broadly consistent with previous results for parallaxes and proper motions. Three of our systems have full Gaia orbital fits; however, their true orbital periods are long and all three Gaia solutions are spurious. Gaia DR4 will provide individual astrometric measurements and enable more detailed and extensive investigations of accelerating and orbital fits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_08374
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Orbits and Masses for 156 Companions from Combined Astrometry and Radial Velocities, and A Validation of Gaia Non-Single Star Solutions
An, Qier
Brandt, Timothy D.
Brandt, G. Mirek
Venner, Alexander
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
We combine absolute astrometry from Hipparcos and Gaia with archival radial velocities from the Keck/HIRES and ESO/HARPS spectrographs, as well as relative astrometry (when available), to derive masses and orbits for 156 companions around main-sequence stars, including 111 stellar companions, 12 brown dwarfs, and 33 planets. Although this sample is not compiled for occurrence-rate statistics due to systematic biases in non-uniform target selection and varied observing strategies, we nonetheless clearly detect the Brown Dwarf desert in the distribution of companion masses (as well as in mass ratio), out to separations of more than 10 AU. This work also enables a validation of Gaia DR3 non-single-star solutions by predicting Gaia's measured Right Ascension and Declination acceleration terms. For stars with Gaia astrometric acceleration solutions, we find qualitative agreement with Gaia DR3 results. Our predicted accelerations agree with the Gaia DR3 values overall, showing a median offset of 1.85 sigma, with a tail extending to about 10 sigma. These residuals suggest modestly underestimated uncertainties, broadly consistent with previous results for parallaxes and proper motions. Three of our systems have full Gaia orbital fits; however, their true orbital periods are long and all three Gaia solutions are spurious. Gaia DR4 will provide individual astrometric measurements and enable more detailed and extensive investigations of accelerating and orbital fits.
title Orbits and Masses for 156 Companions from Combined Astrometry and Radial Velocities, and A Validation of Gaia Non-Single Star Solutions
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08374