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Wide Binaries: Probes of The Galaxy’s Dark Matter Content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2015

Terry D. Oswalt ,
J.Allyn Smith  and
Matt A. Wood
Terry D. Oswalt
Affiliation:
Florida Institute of Technology Department of Physics and Space Sciences Melbourne, Florida, 32901-6988 USAoswalt@tycho.pss.fit.edu
J.Allyn Smith
Affiliation:
Florida Institute of Technology Department of Physics and Space Sciences Melbourne, Florida, 32901-6988 USAoswalt@tycho.pss.fit.edu
Matt A. Wood
Affiliation:
Florida Institute of Technology Department of Physics and Space Sciences Melbourne, Florida, 32901-6988 USAoswalt@tycho.pss.fit.edu

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Photometric parallaxes derived from B, V, R, I photometry of wide binaries with white dwarf components were used to set a firm lower limit to the age of the Galactic disk (see Oswalt et al. 1996 and the article by Wood elsewhere in these proceedings). Here we show the distribution of projected semi-major axes derived from new B, V, R, I data for over 200 wide pairs.

Like clusters, wide binaries are gradually disrupted, primarily by the gentle but cumulative effects of encounters with the denser parts of giant molecular clouds (see Wasserman & Wienberg 1991 for a review). A sharp cut-off in semi-major axes > 0.1 pc was one of the predictions of competing models. Wood & Oswalt (1992) showed that additional orbital expansion occurs in wide pairs which have experienced isotropic post-MS mass loss. Can we see the signatures of these events in the wide binary sample?

Type
II. Joint Discussions
Information
Highlights of Astronomy , Volume 11 , Issue 1: Highlights of Astronomy. As presented at the XXIIIrd General Assembly of the IAU (Part A), 1997 , 1998 , pp. 436
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1998

Footnotes

*

Now at the University of Michigan.

References

Oswalt, T.D. et al. 1996, Nature (letters), 382, 692.Google Scholar
Wasserman, I., & Weinberg, M.D. 1991, ApJ 382, 149.Google Scholar
Wood, M.A., & Oswalt, T.D. 1992, ApJ 394, L53.Google Scholar