arXiv subjects

D. Pourbaix

Publications and source records attributed to D. Pourbaix.

58 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2002

Precision and accuracy of the orbital parameters derived from 2D & 1D space observations of visual or astrometric binaries

Recent investigations (e.g. Han et al. 2001) have shown that fitting the Hipparcos observations with an orbital model when the astrometric wobble caused by the companion is below the noise level can have rather unexpected consequences. With new astrometric missions coming out within the next ten years, it is worth investigating the orbit reconstruction capabilities of such instruments at low signal-to-noise ratio. This is especially important because some of them will have no input catalogue thus meaning that all the orbital parameters will have to be derived from scratch. The puzzling case of almost parabolic orbits is also investigated.

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arXiv2001

Screening the Hipparcos-based astrometric orbits of sub-stellar objects

The combination of Hipparcos astrometric data with the spectroscopic data of putative extrasolar planets seems to indicate that a significant fraction of these low-mass companions could be brown or M dwarfs Han et al. (2001). We show that this is due to the adopted reduction procedure, and consequently that the Hipparcos data do not reject the planetary mass hypothesis in all but one cases. Additional companions, undetected so far, might also explain the large astrometric residuals of some of these stars.

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arXiv2001

Reprocessing the Hipparcos data for evolved giant stars II. Absolute magnitudes for the R-type carbon stars

The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data for carbon stars have been reprocessed using an algorithm which provides an objective criterion for rejecting anomalous data points and constrains the parallax to be positive. New parallax solutions have been derived for 317 cool carbon stars, mostly of types R and N. In this paper we discuss the results for the R stars. The most important result is that the early R stars (i.e., R0 - R3) have absolute magnitudes and V-K colors locating them among red clump giants in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. Stars with subtypes R4 - R9 tend to be cooler and have similar luminosity to the N-type carbon stars, as confirmed by their position in the (J-H, H-K) color-color diagram. The sample of early R-type stars selected from the Hipparcos Catalogue appears to be approximately complete to magnitude K_0 ~ 7, translating into a completeness distance of 600 pc if all R stars had M_K= -2 (400 pc if M_K= -1). With about 30 early R-type stars in that volume, they comprise about 0.04% (0.14% for M_K= -1) of the red clump stars in the solar neighborhood. Identification with the red clump locates these stars at the helium core burning stage of stellar evolution, while the N stars are on the asymptotic giant branch, where helium shell burning occurs. The present analysis suggests that for a small fraction of the helium core burning stars (far lower than the fraction of helium shell-burning stars), carbon produced in the interior is mixed to the atmosphere in sufficient quantities to form a carbon star.

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arXiv2001

The Hipparcos observations and the mass of sub-stellar objects

The Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data have been used lately to estimate the inclination of the orbital plane of candidate extrasolar planets. Whereas most of these investigations derive almost face-on orbits, we show that the astrometric data are seldom precise enough to undertake such studies and that the `face-on' result might be just a spurious effect of the method.

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