Massive binaries as seen with Gaia
Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium
Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium
Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium
Institut d’Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium
Abstract
Gaia, ESA’s forthcoming astrometric observatory, will observe a billion stars of our Galaxy, among which thousands of high-mass stars. In this contribution, we study the capabilities of Gaia’s spectrometer (RVS) in the context of massive stars, especially the detectability of lower-mass companions to O-type stars. This preliminary study enables us to estimate to what extent Gaia will constrain the distribution of the physical and orbital parameters of massive binaries (luminosity, period, mass ratio, eccentricity...).