Statistical Analysis of a Comprehensive List of Visual Binaries

Abstract

Visual binary stars are the most abundant class of observed binaries. The most comprehensive list of data on visual binaries compiled recently by cross-matching the largest catalogues of visual binaries allowed a statistical investigation of observational parameters of these systems. The dataset was cleaned by correcting uncertainties and misclassifications, and supplemented with available parallax data. The refined dataset is free from technical biases and contains 3676 presumably physical visual pairs of luminosity class V with known angular separations, magnitudes of the components, spectral types, and parallaxes. We also compiled a restricted sample of 998 pairs free from observational biases due to the probability of binary discovery. Certain distributions of observational and physical parameters of stars of our dataset are discussed.

Keywords

• binaries: visual
• astronomical databases: miscellaneous
• catalogues