Shrinivas R. Kulkarni

The Keck I/HIRES and TNG/SARG Radial Velocity Survey of Speckle Binaries

A sample of about 160 speckle binary stars was observed with the Keck I telescope and its Echelle HIRES spectrograph over the years 2003-2007 in an effort to detect substellar and planetary companions to components of binary and multiple star systems. This data set was supplemented with the data obtained at the TNG telescope equipped with the SARG Echelle spectrograph over the years 2006-2007. The high-resolution (R = 65000 for HIRES and R = 86000 for SARG) and high signal-to-noise (typically 75-150) spectra were used to derive radial velocities of the components of the observed speckle binaries. Here, we present a summary of this effort, which includes the discovery of new triple star systems and improved orbital solutions of a few known binaries.