THE TRUE AND APPARENT ELLIPTICAL ORBITS OF A VISUAL BINARY STAR

Authors : Esmat BEKİR

Pages : 51-62

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Publication Date : 2018-08-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Observation of binary star orbits reveals only the apparent orbit of these two celestial bodies which differs from the true orbit. Due to the inclination of the plane of the true orbit one can only observe its projection onto the plane of sky. Computing the true orbit from the apparent orbit is based on constructing the auxiliary ellipse. This process is well known insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Kallrath 2009); but requires arduous numerical computations. In this paper a simpler approach to obtain the auxiliary ellipse is presented and its derivation is provided. This approach finds out that the coefficients of the auxiliary ellipse are very simple functions of those of the apparent ellipse.
Keywords : celestial mechanics, binary stars, auxiliary ellipse, true orbit