Discovering Southern double stars – the 20th century

Presenter(s): Ross Gould

Affiliation(s): Canberra Astronomical Society

Session details: Saturday, 2016-03-26 00:30:00, LT106

Abstract

The Southern Hemisphere was systematically surveyed for double stars later than the Northern Hemisphere. I will look at the work of Innes, Hussey, van den Bos, Rossiter, Voute and others, the emphasis being on the work done in South Africa. The era covered will be from the 1890s to the 1960s. The purpose of searching for doubles is to find the gravitationally bound pairs, the genuine binaries, for establishing over time the orbits and thereby the stellar masses of these objects, and to provide statistical information regarding double and hierarchical systems. As Dr Paul Couteau of Nice Observatory (Fr) has pointed out, by the time the surveys had concluded, more close pairs – the ones most likely to be gravitationally bound – were known in the South than in the North.

Biography

Ross Gould has been involved in astronomy since Primary school. He worked at the Canberra Observatory/Planetarium c1986-2006, and worked at Mt Stromlo Observatory in their public programs during the period 1998-2006. He was editor of Southern Sky magazine (1993-95), and writer on double stars etc for that magazine. Ross has been a major contributor to Haas’s “Double Stars for small telescopes”, and a Contributing Editor, Australian Sky & Telescope, “Double Star Notes”, 2008 to present.