Tsevi Mazeh

Infrared Detection of Low-Mass Secondaries in Spectroscopic Binaries

This paper outlines an infrared spectroscopic technique to measure the radial velocities of faint secondaries in known single-lined binaries. The paper presents our H-band observations with the Cryogenic Echelle (CSHELL) and the Phoenix spectrographs and describes detections of three low-mass secondaries in main-sequence binaries, G147-36, G164-67, and HD 144284, with mass ratios of 0.562 ± 0.011, 0.423 ± 0.042, and 0.380 ± 0.013, respectively. The latter is one of the smallest mass ratios derived to date for detached main-sequence stars.

Gaia Data Release 2: Summary of the variability processing and analysis results

Context. The Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) contains more than half a million sources that are identified as variable stars. Aims: We summarise the processing and results of the identification of variable source candidates of RR Lyrae stars, Cepheids, long-period variables (LPVs), rotation modulation (BY Dra-type) stars, δ Scuti and SX Phoenicis stars, and short-timescale variables. In this release we aim to provide useful but not necessarily complete samples of candidates. Methods: The processed Gaia data consist of the G, GBP, and GRP photometry during the first 22 months of operations as well as positions and parallaxes. Various methods from classical statistics, data mining, and time-series analysis were applied and tailored to the specific properties of Gaia data, as were various visualisation tools to interpret the data. Results: The DR2 variability release contains 228 904 RR Lyrae stars, 11 438 Cepheids, 151 761 LPVs, 147 535 stars with rotation modulation, 8882 δ Scuti and SX Phoenicis stars, and 3018 short-timescale variables. These results are distributed over a classification and various Specific Object Studies tables in the Gaia archive, along with the three-band time series and associated statistics for the underlying 550 737 unique sources. We estimate that about half of them are newly identified variables. The variability type completeness varies strongly as a function of sky position as a result of the non-uniform sky coverage and intermediate calibration level of these data. The probabilistic and automated nature of this work implies certain completeness and contamination rates that are quantified so that users can anticipate their effects. Thismeans that even well-known variable sources can be missed or misidentified in the published data. Conclusions: The DR2 variability release only represents a small subset of the processed data. Future releases will include more variable sources and data products; however, DR2 shows the (already) very high quality of the data and great promise for variability studies.

TODCOR: A Two-Dimensional Correlation of a Composite Spectrum to Derive the Radial Velocities of its Components

Cross correlation is a frequently used technique to obtain the Doppler shifts of digitized celestial spectra. This method, suggested by Tonry & Davis (1979), cross correlates the observed spectrum against an assumed template, and obtains the stellar radial velocity by the location of the correlation maximum (Wyatt 1985). The technique finds the correct radial velocity even for extremely low S/N spectra. Spectra composed of two components present a potential difficulty to this technique. The cross correlation of these spectra usually displays a double peak which can not be resolved whenever the relative velocity of the two components is small. To overcome this difficulty, we developed TODCOR — a new TwO-Dimensional CORrelation algorithm which can simultaneously derive the Doppler shifts of the two components. TODCOR assumes that the observed spectrum is a combination of two known spectra with unknown shifts. Following the one-dimensional technique, the algorithm calculates the correlation of the observed spectrum against a set of combinations of two templates, with all possible shifts. The correlation, thus, is a two-dimensional function, whose two independent variables are the radial velocities of the two components. The location of the maximum of this function corresponds to the actual Doppler shifts of the two components.