<i>HIPPARCOS</i>PHOTOCENTRIC ORBITS OF 72 SINGLE-LINED SPECTROSCOPIC BINARIES

Abstract

By fitting the Hipparcos Intermediate Astrometric Data (HIAD), photocentric orbits can be obtained for the single-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB1s). In previous work, a simplifying approximation used in the fitting process was that the photocenter coincides with the primary, but simple arguments based on a mass–luminosity relation show that this approximation will introduce non-negligible deviation into photocentric orbits of a few SB1s. By fitting the revised HIAD without the approximation, the present paper tries to provide reliable photocentric orbits for those SB1s in the 9th Catalogue of Orbits of Spectroscopic Binaries having a reliable spectroscopic orbit of period between 50 days and 3.2 years. After a stringent assessment and screening process, we finally accept the photocentric orbits of 72 systems. Among these results, 37 orbits are obtained here for the first time. So far, only three of these systems are resolved with a known relative orbit. For each of them, the paired photocentric and relative orbits are in reasonably good agreement. For the 25 systems with a main-sequence primary, the masses of component stars and the semimajor axes of relative orbits are estimated for the purpose of planning ground-based observations.