A Quintuple Star System Containing Two Eclipsing Binaries

Creators: Rappaport, S.; Lehmann, H.; Kalomeni, B.; Borkovits, T.; Latham, D.; Bieryla, A.; Ngo, H.; Mawet, D.; Howell, S.; Horch, E.; Jacobs, T. L.; LaCourse, D.; Sódor, Á.; Vanderburg, A.; Pavlovski, K.

Abstract

We present a quintuple star system that contains two eclipsing binaries. The unusual architecture includes two stellar images separated by 11 arcsec on the sky: EPIC 212651213 and EPIC 212651234. The more easterly image (212651213) actually hosts both eclipsing binaries which are resolved within that image at 0.09 arcsec, while the westerly image (212651234) appears to be single in adaptive optics (AO), speckle imaging, and radial velocity (RV) studies. The 'A' binary is circular with a 5.1-d period, while the 'B' binary is eccentric with a 13.1-d period. The γ velocities of the A and B binaries are different by ∼10 km s^(−1). That, coupled with their resolved projected separation of 0.09 arcsec, indicates that the orbital period and separation of the 'C' binary (consisting of A orbiting B) are ≃65 yr and ≃25 au, respectively, under the simplifying assumption of a circular orbit. Motion within the C orbit should be discernible via future RV, AO, and speckle imaging studies within a couple of years. The C system (i.e. 212651213) has an RV and proper motion that differ from that of 212651234 by only ∼1.4 km s^(−1) and ∼3 mas yr^(−1). This set of similar space velocities in three dimensions strongly implies that these two objects are also physically bound, making this at least a quintuple star system.

Additional Information

© 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted 2016 July 15. Received 2016 July 14. In original form 2016 May 20. First published online July 19, 2016. We are grateful to Mark Everett for help with the WIYN observations. We thank Alan Levine for helpful discussions about this system. Some of the data presented in this paper were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for MAST for non-HST data is provided by the NASA Office of Space Science via grant NNX09AF08G and by other grants and contracts. Based, in part, on data from CMC15 Data Access Service at CAB (INTA-CSIC). This work was based on observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory granted by the California Institute of Technology. We thank the observers who contributed to the measurements reported here and acknowledge the efforts of the Keck Observatory staff. We extend special thanks to those of Hawaiian ancestry on whose sacred mountain of Mauna Kea we are privileged to be guests. AV is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Grant No. DGE 1144152. EH is grateful for support from NASA's Ames Research Center that allowed him to participate in the speckle observations and analysis. BK gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Council (TÜBİTAK-112T766 and TÜBİTAK-BİDEP 2219). KP was supported by the Croatian HRZZ grant 2014-09-8656. ÁS acknowledges the financial support of the Hungarian NKFIH Grant K-115709 and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. TB and ÁS acknowledge the financial support of the NKFIH Grant OTKA K-113117. The Konkoly observations were supported by the Lendület grant LP2012-31 of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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Submitted - 1606.06324v1__1_.pdf

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