Spectroscopic binary mass determination using relativity

Abstract

High-precision radial-velocity techniques, which enabled the detection of extrasolar planets, are now sensitive to relativistic effects in the data of spectroscopic binary stars (SBs). These effects can be used to derive the absolute masses of the components of eclipsing single-lined SBs and double-lined SBs from Doppler measurements alone. High-precision stellar spectroscopy can thus substantially increase the number of measured stellar masses, thereby improving the mass-radius and mass-magnitude calibrations. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.