Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | Duplicity is still the only hypothesis-free method to derive stellar masses. Whereas other techniques such as asteroseismology rely upon some stellar model, orbits of binary stars yield quantities directly related to either the sum of the masses or the individual masses of the two components. However, in order to derive those individual masses, it is necessary to combine at least two types of observations, e.g., visual and spectroscopic or photometric and spectroscopic. Gaia will make the three of them available but their combination will be an efficient source of masses for sub-groups of binaries only. For instance, given the precision of the radial velocities, how many orbital visual binaries (for which the mass sum is therefore accessible) will lead to a spectroscopic orbit required to derive the mass ratio and thus the individual masses? |
