Climbing the cosmic ladder with stellar twins
Language
en
Article de revue
This item was published in
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 2015, vol. 453, n° 2, p. 1428-1438
Oxford University Press (OUP): Policy P - Oxford Open Option A
English Abstract
Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, ...Read more >
Distances to stars are key to revealing a three-dimensional view of the Milky Way, yet their determination is a major challenge in astronomy. Whilst the brightest nearby stars benefit from direct parallax measurements, fainter stars are subject of indirect determinations with uncertainties exceeding 30%. We present an alternative approach to measuring distances using spectroscopically-identified twin stars. Given a star with known parallax, the distance to its twin is assumed to be directly related to the difference in their apparent magnitudes. We found 175 twin pairs from the ESO public HARPS archives and report excellent agreement with Hipparcos parallaxes within 7.5%. Most importantly, the accuracy of our results does not degrade with increasing stellar distance. With the ongoing collection of high-resolution stellar spectra, our method is well-suited to complement Gaia.Read less <
English Keywords
Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Origin
Hal imported