The orbit of the mercury-manganese binary 41 Eridani
Abstract
The mercury-manganese (HgMn) stars are a class of peculiar main-sequence late-type B stars. Their members show a wide variety of abundance anomalies with both depletions (e.g., He) and enhancements (Hg, Mn) and tend to be slow rotators relative to their normal analogs. More than two thirds of the HgMn stars are known to belong to spectroscopic binaries with a preference of orbital periods ranging from 3 to 20 days.1 Interferometric orbits were already measured for the HgMn binaries Φ Herculis,2 X Lupi,3 and α Andromedae.4 Here we report on a program to study the binarity of HgMn stars with the PIONIER near-infrared interferometer at the VLTI on Cerro Paranal, Chile. Among 40 stars, companions were found for 11 of them, and the data allowed the determination of the orbital elements of 41 Eridani, with a period of just 5 days and a semi-major axis of under 2 mas.
- Publication:
-
Optical and Infrared Interferometry and Imaging V
- Pub Date:
- August 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1117/12.2231859
- Bibcode:
- 2016SPIE.9907E..0QH